


Lazarus Stone - Razorblade Smiles

by ThisBeautifulDrowning



Series: The Lazarus Stone Arc [2]
Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: Bloodplay, M/M, Mysticism, Slash, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 03:45:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisBeautifulDrowning/pseuds/ThisBeautifulDrowning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Second book of the Lazarus Stone Arc, describing Farfarello's journey from childhood to adult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lazarus Stone - Razorblade Smiles

**The Lazarus Stone: Razorblade Smiles**

**Interlude Story**

**Second Book in the Lazarus Trilogy**

 

Prologue

 

_We’re going to jump through time now. Quickly and silently._

_Don’t make a sound. He must not hear._

 

 

**+++++**

**Enniskillen 1977**

**North Ireland**

**+++++**

 

He was born a child of snow and gold, and the first thing he remembered were large hands reaching for him. There was a strange, glowing light behind the hands – and he did not know back then what hands were, but the large shapes were warm and kind and cradled him against something even larger and much warmer – and the baby, myopic eyes, fresh from the womb where all things were dark and calm and warm and time was measured out by a rhythmic drum shaking his entire body, turned his head away from the light and sought solace in the warmth.

 

There were noises – and he did not know what noise was, either, just that it was something hurting his sensitive ears with a loud clanging and banging and a crackling – but they receded steadily as the large shape he was pressed against moved. Then it was cold, a sensation also alien to him, but the cold faded as well, and quickly, and the baby, tired from such a start into the world, closed his eyes and trusted the large shape to keep him warm and safe. 

 

Time passed, marked by changing shapes and different sounds and smells, and gradually, as his myopia gave way to sharper shapes that he was gradually able to attach to words, the baby grew into a toddler and the toddler grew into a small human being with white hair and yellow eyes. 

 

He was five years old when he first saw her and fell in love with her. Of course, back then, and because one so young knows not what love all includes, he did not think of the warm feeling he had every time he encountered her as love, but it was there, in his chest, beating beneath his ribcage and next to his heart. She was off-limits to him. Ethereal in her warm beauty and haunted, kind eyes, she looked at him with the same affection she looked at other children. Perhaps, and perhaps he only imagined it, her hands lingered on his shoulders or on his cheek longer than they did on the other children, and perhaps her voice was a bit softer when she spoke to him, but Jay O’Siodhachain knew Sister Ruth had the same open heart for everyone, and not just for him. And perhaps he loved her even more because of that.

 

\---

 

“Snowball! Snowball!”

 

He could hear her heart. The realization fascinated Jay so much he forgot to exert revenge on his sister for the hated nickname. 

 

It had to be her heart; there were no other sounds around them quite matching the fast, deep drumming that filled his ears and made what followed from Jenny’s mouth – undoubtedly the rest of the insult – nearly inaudible to him.

 

It was not the first time he heard this drum. Over the last two months, Jay had been hearing drums of different sorts off and on, mostly when he was around people, but also when he was alone, either in his room or outside on his own, searching the banks of the river Erne for something to occupy his spare time with. Then, outside, the drums were different; fainter somehow, as if from a great distance. He had not paid much attention to the strange occurrence yet, but now that Jenny stood directly in front of him and was just about to reach out to tug on his hair, he knew with shocking clarity that those drums had been heartbeats as well. 

 

“Stop it!” He slapped her hand to the side and ran around the kitchen table. “Stop calling me that!”

 

His sister, three years older and his direct opposite – she had inherited their parents’ dark hair and warm dark eyes -, mock-scowled and rubbed her slapped hand before her face took on that wolfish expression he hated so much. Jenny grinned maliciously and began to follow him around the table.

 

“Perhaps mom will allow you to die that hair one day, what do you think? Sean said you look like a snowman with piss for eyes.”

 

Five years old and lithe of body, Jay calculated the chance of reaching the back door before Jenny reached him and tugged on his hair as slim, but he had never been one not to try. The siblings had been bantering for as long as he could remember, and sometimes he even enjoyed Jenny’s taunts and joyfully screamed one insult after the other back at her. 

 

Jenny had been most wonderfully vexed after he had pointed out the similarities between the colour of her hair and the dark horse apples sometimes lying on the road, baking in the sun or freezing to solid, dark clumps in the frost and snow.

 

“Snowball! Snowball! When the first snow comes we won’t see you _at all_! Tickle you until you fall!” 

 

Jay stuck his tongue out at his older sister and pushed away from the table as he saw the dark shape of their father moving behind the glass of the back door. He squealed as Jenny lunged and nearly grabbed the back of his shirt, but then their father opened the door, and Jay flung himself to the ground, slipped between his father’s legs, bounced down the single step into the garden, and raced off, hearing his father’s laugh and Jenny’s howl of annoyance behind him. 

 

The garden of their home bordered sharply against a small patch of wood - hazel and fir, standing loosely grouped, moss at their roots. In the summers, that moss smelled dark and somewhat wet, and Jay loved to lounge on it for hours with a picture book or simply his own daydreams. He passed the invisible border between their garden and the trees and raced on, though slower now, careful not to trip over any roots or fallen twigs. The last time he had fallen and ripped the knees of his trousers open, his mom had been questioning for half an hour how he had managed to rip the cloth but not the skin beneath the cloth, and in the end she had almost been convinced Jay had made the tear with his fingers and not, as he claimed, by falling over the edge of the curb while running after Sean one bright summer afternoon.

 

It was not before long that the trees completely swallowed the house from his sight, and with it Jenny’s still annoyed shouts and threats. Jay’s fast run slowed to a jog, and finally to a walk, and then the boy sat down on the ground and caught his breath. The sky overhead, though hung with grey clouds, was still light enough to mark the afternoon as not gone yet; it would be a few hours before he had to return to Jenny’s taunts and his mother’s cooking, and then the long dark of the night. Summer was almost gone, the first cold breezes of the coming fall, winter at their heels with a touch of frost on the grass earlier this week, and although the air was strangely warmer beneath the trees than out in the open, Jay could almost taste the impeding cold in his mouth.

 

Eyes turned in the general direction of his home, Jay plucked at the ground and tried to remember what it had sounded like, Jenny’s heartbeat. As if his sister’s absence now made the sound something he could not envision, he thought of a drum again – there had been a ‘culture show’, as his mother called them, on the TV two days ago. Something about men and women wearing coloured wool, their skin dark, their eyes darker, and the boy had stared at the almost alien-looking people with fascination as they formed a line and danced to an urban, haunting sound of drums and metal pipes. It was a rare occurrence, to find someone with such dark skin so high up in the country, but Jay had been more fascinated by the rhythm they danced to and the feeling of – longing it awakened in him. 

 

Jenny’s heart had sounded like that, Jay decided after a moment. Only deeper and darker and – wet almost. A faint sucking sound had accompanied her beats. He tried to listen to it again, but either he was too far away from the house to hear it or he had imagined it, and all he heard was the shifting of the trees around him. Once he concentrated on it, it seemed, the sound escaped him. An annoyed sigh escaped him. 

 

It had been the same at the banks of the River Erne. Once he concentrated on it, it went away, much like those dreams he sometimes had; dreams shortly before he woke, and although the images seemed scarily real while he was dreaming, they were fading fast when he was awake. 

 

Jay plucked at the ground some more, shredding a leaf under his fingers. He felt disappointed. He had wanted to think about the curious revelation of being able to hear heartbeats some more, but now he was sitting here under the trees feeling stupid. His mother would laugh at him if he came to her with this, and his father would only raise an eyebrow before sending a glance at his mother – and they would say something, he knew, along the lines of Jay eating too many sweets or having his head too high up in the clouds again. It always went like this. 

 

But there was someone else who might listen, and after a brief glance at the unchanged sky, Jay was running again. He chose the most direct route through the small patch of trees and emerged on the other side, directly at the fence that divided the land they lived on from the corn and vegetable fields of their neighbours. 

 

Most of Enniskillen, sitting smack on a small island surrounded by the waters of the River Erne, was far from being the rural countryside it had once been, but when he was here, alone between fields of golden corn and the dark green veil of a forest, Jay could almost forget there were train tracks just beyond that field, and that recently, a new shop selling strange machines called ‘computers’ had opened on the Main Street dividing Enniskillen neatly in half. His father had taken him past the shop just last week, and he had largely shared his sentiment: that those large, unsightly slabs of grey metal were not good for anything but wasting money and electricity. 

 

As the ‘Island County Town of Fermanagh’, Enniskillen had gained its reputation with the tourists as well. Sean, Jenny, Jay, and all the other local children sometimes made a sport of trailing them – playing detectives with the unsuspecting tourists and running away with peals of laughter when they turned to look at who was following them, the illicit thrill of maybe being caught tight on the heels of the children. But now that the summer was slowly coming to an end, less and less of the tourists remained, and the colourful hotels built along the Main Street – which changed names six times along its length! – were taking down their ‘Free Rooms Available’ signs and prepared for the long stretch of cold customary to this region of Ireland. 

 

He emerged from the thin line between field and wood after a good twenty minutes of brisk walking and, as was almost a habit for him, stared out across the fast-moving waters of the River Erne at Cherry Island, a small natural outcropping of boulders haphazardly decorated with fir trees and bushes. Although a bridge now spanned from the north side of the main island of Enniskillen to the southwest bank of the Erne, Jay, as most children of Enniskillen, had a natural respect for the lonely Cherry Island boulders and imagined, as always, to see the glint of a blade held tightly in a pirate’s hand to greet him from across the water. There had never been any pirates here, or anywhere even near Enniskillen, Ballaghmore Lough and Back Lough, but Jay loved to listen to his father’s stories when night fell, and his imagination made up for the lack of black-flagged, canon-sprouting ships near him. 

 

Careful to cross the street just near the library, Jay found himself right in the middle of a normal weekday afternoon in Enniskillen. He hurried past shops and dodged people on the sidewalk, here and there nodding or waving at people as they greeted him. Having lived here all his life and having been an outdoors child for as long as he could walk, his parents had finally given in to his habit of wandering off on his own when all chiding and threats of being grounded had produced no desirable result. Even with the growing infestation of tourists each summer, as his father had once put it, Enniskillen was still a folk town – folk who stuck close together and watched after their own, especially their children. As long as he was careful and came home before nightfall, Jay and his sister Jenny were allowed to spend as much time outside as they wanted. Jay secretly guessed his mother was rather fond of that fact – Jay and Jenny, even when not occupied with harassing each other, had more than once been called nosy and noisy children not only by their parents. 

 

He rounded the corner of Main Street and saw his destination tower above the rooftops and chimneys of the houses: St. Macartin’s Cathedral. Located close to the centre of Enniskillen in the adequately named Church Street, Jay had to cross several parking lots before he reached the green lawn in front of the cathedral. He made sure to follow the gravel path leading up to and then around the cathedral to the buildings in the back; too well he had learned his lesson, when once in a fit of rage he had stomped all over the grass to find Sean hiding in the bushes to the right of the monumental building. The gardener had chased them both from the premises with a shovel raised high above his head.

 

Today, there was no gardener in sight. Only a few people, tourists from the looks of it, lingered on the gravel path, and Jay ducked his head in almost-shame as he felt their eyes linger on him. He knew he looked peculiar with his white hair and yellow eyes, a sight that was uncommon up here and not only here as he sometimes thought. While he could forgive his sister’s and his friends’ bantering and nicknames, being stared at with open curiosity was not something he endured lightly. He walked past them quickly, eyes cast down at the toes of his shoes, and looked back as he reached the corner of the front of the cathedral to find them still staring after him. 

 

_Go away. Look at something else!_

 

The small group of men and women turned and walked toward Church Street, chatting among each other loudly enough for Jay to hear their words. Not a language he understood. He put it out of his mind and turned himself, walked around the corner of the cathedral, and found himself in the calmness of St. Macartin’s churchyard.

 

As always, he felt intimidated by the old, impressive building. There was something about this place that he could not quite fit into words, but Jay felt soothed by it. Perhaps it was the silence of the place. Even in the middle of summer, when the town seemed abuzz with different languages and three times as many cars as usually on Main Street, the churchyard of St. Macartin’s was an oasis of silence. Jay slowed his steps and quietly passed beneath a stone arch, entering a small square place overshadowed by two weeping willows. Their branches long enough to skitter across the clean-swept ground with every breeze, heavy with snow and ice in the winter, had often sheltered him and the other children of Enniskillen from the sun during the hours they spent here. He spotted the calm figure sitting on a stone bench just a little of the left of one of the willows immediately and felt a small, warm pang in his stomach at her sight.

 

Sister Ruth was, to him, the most beautiful human being he had ever seen in his entire life. 

 

He approached her carefully as he saw her eyes closed and her hands clasped in her lap, knowing she was praying. In the slowly fading light of the day, her even features were relaxed, the curve of her generously smiling mouth lax. He loved to watch her like this. Much like the silence in this place, Sister Ruth was a fountain of peace and gentleness, and she seemed so different from the rest of the people of Enniskillen that sometimes Jay wondered what places she had seen and what stories she could tell if she were to narrate her life. Unlike his mother’s, Sister Ruth’s hands were soft and gentle – not to say that his mother’s hands were hard and cruel, but they were the hands of a woman who had spent her entire life in the harsh weather and on the fields of Enniskillen, and who now worked for one of the retail companies that had been settling here lately. 

 

“Sister Ruth?” Jay said in a whisper as he stood just shy of arm’s length. He peered at her closed eyes and saw her lips move as if in prayer, and tried again. “Sister Ruth, it’s me, Jay.”

 

Her eyes opened, and an instant later she was smiling widely and reaching out for him to embrace him in a gentle hug.

 

“Did you come to visit me, Jay?” 

 

He nodded and smiled back at her and immediately regretted the loss of her arms as she let him go. There was something about her that made him trust her completely – not the same trust he had to his mother and father, but something else, deeper. Sister Ruth had been a friend of the family for as long as Jay could remember. 

 

Now Sister Ruth turned her face toward the sky and then looked at him. “It will be dark soon, Jay.”

 

“I know, Sister, but I wanted to come and see you.” He sat down on the stone bench next to her and reached for her hand to thread his fingers with hers. “I had something strange happen to me today and there’s no one I can talk to about it except for you.”

 

“All right, then we’ll talk about it, and then you’ll go home before your mom and dad are beginning to worry where you are.”

 

He nodded eagerly; maybe if he managed to make what he had to talk about a bit longer, he could stay here a bit longer. His parents would not be angry at him if he told them he had stayed with Sister Ruth.

 

“Jenny was mocking me today and then I heard her heartbeat!” 

 

Was he imagining it, or did her fingers tighten around his? “Her heartbeat? What do you mean?”

 

“I don’t know – I mean, I’m not sure, it’s like when I was at the Erne and heard all those drums around me.”

 

Sister Ruth turned toward him, shifting on the bench, and regarded him. “Yes, I remember. You told me about that, too.”

 

He went on, “And today, Jenny was calling me names and I heard her. And it was so strange, like a drum again but louder this time.” 

 

Her reaction was disappointing, but he hid it well. Sister Ruth extracted her fingers from his and stood, smoothing down her habit and her long black clothing. Did he imagine it, or was there a shadow, clouding her face for a second? Jay stood and looked up at the woman he adored beyond the measures of his child’s heart, fearful suddenly that he may be taking up too much of her time – something Jenny liked to mock him about. 

 

_Jay and Ruth will marry, Jay and Ruth will marry! But she’ll never marry you, because she’s a nun, and you know it!_

 

“Sister Ruth? Did I say something wrong?”

 

Her nearly closed-off expression shifted into the gentle mask he was familiar with, and he found his fear of having annoyed her soothed by the hand that tousled his hair.

 

“No Jay. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.” Her hands smoothed down the hair she had tousled, and then she was kneeling in front of him, her face level with his. “But remember what you promised me?”

 

Jay bit his lip; yes, he remembered. “I said I wouldn’t listen to it anymore. But Sister, I – I can’t _not_ listen. It’s there, and I can’t turn it off!”

 

“Shh! You can. You just have to concentrate on something else and the drums will go away.” 

 

“But they - ”

 

She took both his small hands in hers and clasped them to her chest, and now her expression was similar to the face she had made when he first told her about the drums. A nearly frightening mask, eyes wide and hard, and her words cut into him with their gentleness.

 

“Jay, you must not listen to the drums. Do you understand what I’m saying? You must not listen, because…because it is bad to listen.”

 

He could feel the tears threatening now, and he could feel the stab of anger directed at himself more clearly than the warmth and the strength of her hands. Anger, because he had _promised_ her not to listen, and yet he had.

 

“But what should I do when I hear them again?” Anger because his voice was trembling. Sister Ruth, his loved one, was also the one who made him feel like this – weak-minded and disobedient – faster than his parents could. “What should I do?”

 

“Pray, child.” She squeezed his hands once and laced his fingers together. “Do you remember the prayer to the Lord I told you?”

 

He sniffled. “Yes.”

 

“Then pray to the Lord when the drums come, and they will go away again. Jay, I told you that when you go to school next spring, and you tell the other children that you hear drums, they will make fun of you? Do you want them to make fun of you?”

 

There, it happened. A tear, sliding hotly down his cheek, and he could feel it roll into the corner of his mouth where it dissolved and wet his lips. 

 

“No.”

 

“Then do not tell them. Don’t tell anyone, do you understand me?”

 

“But Sister, why can’t I tell anyone?” 

 

She sighed and looked at his fingers. “Because people will not understand. They will think you are making it up, and they will look on you as a liar.”

 

“Even my mom and dad? Even Jenny?”

 

“Yes. Even them.”

 

He considered this and looked up at her. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

 

He would promise her anything in the world, if only she asked him to.

 

\---

 

And he did not tell anyone. As he ran home in the falling light, on an day only days before fall came, Jay promised himself and Sister Ruth he would not listen to the drums anymore, and that if they came, he would pray to the Lord and beg him to make them go away. 

 

The small patch of trees seemed so much darker now that it was later in the day, and Jay felt the customary fear of dark things rise in him as he hurried through them toward the invitingly glowing lights of the kitchen window. He saw his mother move behind the window, standing at the sink after a long day at the retail centre, and waved as she lifted her head. His heart warmed at the smile that broke out on her lips as she saw him, and he hurried up.

 

“There you are, young man!” It was his father who opened the backdoor for him and swept him up from his feet, pressing him against a broad chest. “We were beginning to worry you’d be out howling at the moon again!”

 

Already seated at the kitchen table, Jay saw his sister hide a giggle behind her palm and roll her eyes. He stuck his tongue out at her and wrapped his arms around his father’s neck, laughing and forgetting all about the afternoon in the churchyard as his father let go of his legs and Jay had to hold on with all his strength. 

 

“William, put him down, or this stew will never see the day it’s eaten.” His mother came up to them both and brushed weathered hands through his hair, then pecked Jay on the cheek. “Where have you been? I got a call from Maire and she said she’d seen you running up Church Street.”

 

“I was visiting Sister Ruth again,” Jay answered. He squealed and giggled breathlessly as his father tossed him once into the air and caught him again before he was set down on his feet. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

 

He sat down at the table opposite Jenny and reached for the bread. His sister’s eyes were sharp and cold, and with a sneer Jenny said,

 

“Jay and Ruth are going to marry one day.”

 

+++++

**Enniskillen 1984**

**North Ireland**

**February**

**+++++**

 

It took him a good deal of puzzling and prodding until he understood that Jenny was jealous of him and Sister Ruth, and that in itself puzzled him even more and lead to further puzzling. 

 

Jealous? 

 

Of what?

 

Jenny was three years older than him. She attended Enniskillen Basic School and was, as the older sister, expected to take care of the younger brother when Jay entered the first grade. Children from other county cities rarely attended the local school, and there was no need to protect Jay from any harassing he might have been subjected to, had not everyone already seen him a couple of times; his white hair and yellow eyes did receive a few stares, but once the matter was settled between him and the other students, Jay was treated equally from both teachers and fellow classmates. 

 

There was not much protecting Jenny had to do. Over the winter, Jay had shot a good hand’s width and was, at age six, nearly half a head taller than most of his classmates. What little quarrels there were he mastered with the ferocity of any child out there, and the few times he earned himself bruises or nicked skin, Jay bore his ‘battle wounds’ proudly and promptly forgot about them. He excelled at sports and took a liking to the History lessons taught by gentle Miss Shelly; during the very first parent-teacher conference, barely a month after school had begun for Jay his mother came home from the meeting with his teachers and tousled Jay’s hair proudly, reciting to him how happy they were with him.

 

So what was Jenny jealous of? She did well at school although she claimed – as probably any older sister would do, he figured – her subjects were much harder and more elaborate than his. Her report cards had gained her a little extra allowance even before Jay begun school; she had friends at school, and when they were at home, Jenny continued her bantering and loving harassing. 

 

But then there were the times, moments merely, when Jenny’s eyes would harden and she seemed on the verge of throwing something different than a nickname in his face.

 

During Children’s Hour, Jenny would not move from his side, watching him closely, too closely for his comfort. Children’s Hour…Jay loved Sister Ruth for her idea. She would reserve one hour each day except on Sundays, when the children of Enniskillen could come to her, and they would play, or read from the Bible, or do their homework. It was a mixed group, the oldest of them 15, the youngest five; Ruth treated them with love, and more than once, when a parent came to pick their offspring up, Jay would hear the gratitude in their voices for keeping a close eye on ‘their brat’. 

 

Jay was not a brat, and there was no reason for his parents to come pick him or Jenny up. They would attend Children’s Hour together and walk home together, and often their walk back home would result in a match of snowball-throwing when the fields where white as far as the eye could reach. 

 

So what was Jenny jealous of?

 

He asked his mother one day early Spring noon, when Jenny was in her room with a friend of hers, playing dolls – something Jay was just too glad not to join her in. Dolls were for girls. So he had taken his picture book and jacket down to the kitchen and joined his mother. She stood at the sink, a place that seemed so natural for her, and turned a smile on him as he bounced down the stairs with his jacket slung over his arm. 

 

“Going out?”

 

“Yes, mom. Dinner’s not ready yet, is it?”

 

“You have a few more hours.” And she turned back to the sink and the clinking of dishes in soapy water. “But don’t go too far. And don’t go to the Erne, you hear? I heard on the radio this morning that it’s frozen, but the ice is thin, and I don’t want to have to call the fire department to drag you out of that water.”

 

He giggled and pulled his jacket on, book between his knees. “Mom? Can I ask you something?”

 

“Sure, pet.”

 

“Jenny is…I mean – is Jenny jealous of me?”

 

“What makes you think that?”

 

“Well, I – I don’t know. She’s behaving strangely sometimes. And yesterday during Children’s Hour, Sean told me Jenny told him she’s jealous of me and that he’s not supposed to tell me, but he did.”

 

Ann O’Siodhachain turned from the sink and regarded him with raised eyebrows. “I don’t think Jenny is jealous of you, Jay. She’s your sister. Why should she be jealous?”

 

But Jenny was jealous, he was certain. Because Sean, who was one grade above him and one below Jenny and a friend to them both, had also told him Jenny had told him she wished Sister Ruth would not spend quite so much time with her baby brother.

 

Baby brother! Jay was not a baby anymore!

 

He finished buttoning his jacket and took his book under one arm. At the door, he turned. His mother’s expression had turned wistful, it seemed, her attention focused on a spot on the floor. When she noticed his scrutiny, she smiled and blew him a kiss.

 

“Be careful of that water, you hear me?”

 

“Yes, mom.”

 

And out of the door he was.

 

\---

 

The Erne was frozen as far as Jay could see, its normally rather tranquil waters still now under the pressing blanket of ice. Jay, standing near one of the pillars of the bridge spanning across the river from one bank to the other, put his book down on a boulder and stepped to the edge of the frozen river, hands buried deeply in his pockets. The wind was biting at his nose and lips, and once in a while, he could hear a soft creaking from the ice. Carefully, Jay extended on foot and tested the ice at the edge of the bank, finding it solid enough to hold his weight. 

 

Cherry Island was a still-life painting in the middle of the Erne, its fir trees pristinely white under their coating of snow. As Jay put his second foot on the ice, a crow disengaged from one of the firs, its flapping wings and harrowing sound loud in the otherwise silent air. Jay watched the bird circle over Cherry Island a few times before it flew over him and disappeared out of his sight. 

 

The distance between the island and the river’s bank seemed smaller, somehow, than it did when the Erne’s waters were moving restlessly. Although Jay could still hear his mother’s words, the temptation to cross the frozen surface to Cherry Island was great; for now, though, he stood and pondered, listening for any telltale sounds of creaking ice. The Erne was as treacherous as it was beautiful, and not long ago a tourist child had broken through the ice and nearly drowned. 

 

A car passed on the bridge overhead. Jay looked up as he heard it stop; the slam of a car door was followed by shuffling footsteps, loud suddenly in the silence. Standing completely still, he waited, face turned upward. A moment later, the sizzling butt of a cigarette landed in the snow not far away from him; the footsteps grew distant, the car door slammed again, and then the car was on its way toward Enniskillen, the sound of its engine loud. Jay watched his breath trail the air and felt his lips crack in the cold. 

 

His mother would be furious if she found out he had been to Cherry Island over the ice. 

 

If she found out.

 

The first few steps were accompanied by the fast drum of his heart; slow and careful steps, testing the ice before he put his entire weight down. Halfway between Cherry Island and the bank, Jay turned his head.

 

So far! The distance between the bank and him seemed vast all of a sudden, his book nothing more than a speck of colour amid white. He felt a pang of fear grip him tightly, making him sway; there, it happened: a loud crack. Jay looked down and saw, in slow motion, a ragged line open between his feet.

 

“Mom!”

 

Then the river opened its arms and swallowed him. 

 

It was so cold he thought his heart would stop. Air was ripped from his lungs, leaving behind only agony. He swallowed a mouthful of icy water and kicked, hands scrabbling to reach for the edge of the hole in the ice. He cut his palms open on the sharp edge, feeling his clothes begin to drag him down. His eyes burned. There was a large fist inside him, slowly squeezing him from beneath the ribs. The world dimmed to dark greys, distorted by the water. Above him, the hole in the ice became the sun of an alien sky, beginning to vanish in the distance as he sank deeper. His fingers began to stiffen from the cold.

 

The sun vanished behind a large black cloud, and Jay closed his eyes, and he could feel the ground of the river beneath his feet a moment later as he gently hit the bottom. The water moved sluggishly around him, beginning to drag him away from the place where he had broken through. 

 

He had drifted a good way before he realized he was not drowning. The initial burn of river water in his stomach faded, making way for dull pressure around his ribs, much like the pressure of being underwater in a swimming pool. Jay kicked against the ground and forced his leaden limbs to move, forced his eyes open again, and then he was struggling as though the hounds of hell Sister Ruth had once told him of were on his heels. The water seemed unwilling to let him go, clawing at his soaked clothes, his very skin. He doubled his efforts with a last desperate push of strength and saw the hole he had broken through above him. 

 

More ice broke from the edge as Jay pulled himself up, cutting his fingers open. The sight of his blood mingling with the icy water drove him to frenzy; he snapped for air, kicked again, hands sliding on the flat surface of the ice before he dug his fingernails in so hard he found purchase. Dragging himself out of the water seemed harder than reaching the hole had been. 

 

An indefinite amount of time later, Jay reached the snowy bank of the Erne. His fingers were turning blue by the time he dragged himself onto the bank with his last strength. His teeth were chattering. It felt as though his clothes were beginning to freeze around him, immobilizing him.

 

“Damnit! I knew I’d heard something!”

 

Staring straight ahead, Jay saw large boots flatten the snow in front of his nose. His eyelids seemed to scrape over his eyeballs as he lowered them. The cold was beginning to seep into his very bones. He felt hands lift him off the ground, and a very distant voice was shouting something.

 

Jay did not listen to the voice. Jay listened to his heartbeat, thudding slowly and steadily in his chest. And he prayed: do not stop again. Never stop beating again. 

 

\---

 

“Kid, you can’t be serious.”

 

Swathed in a woollen blanket in the back of the car, Jay huddled deeper into its folds and stared at the man standing next to the open door. His saviour had turned up the heater, and the warmth seemed to him as the most wonderful thing he had ever felt in his life. 

 

“You need to get checked over, kid. Damn, I thought you’d drown.” The stranger shook his head and moved closer to the open door, squatting down on his haunches to look at him. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, swathing his square, friendly face in blue fumes. “I’m taking you to a hospital.”

 

“No!” It came out as a croak and not nearly as forceful as he had intended. Jay felt something in his lungs bubble and coughed, hiding his face behind a fold of the blanket before he took a deep breath and faced the stranger. “No. I can’t. Everyone knows me around here. Mom’ll be furious if she finds out…”

 

“…finds out you nearly drowned?” 

 

Meekly, Jay nodded.

 

The stranger shook his head again. “Kid, if you were mine, I’d not know if I should hug you or flay the skin off your backside. You’re soaking wet. You have cuts from the ice all over you. Did your parents not teach you a little common sense?” 

 

Jay glanced at him sideways. He had never seen this man around here, so he was most likely a tourist. He had not told him his name yet, and the stranger had not asked his. He was tall, taller than any man Jay had ever seen in Enniskillen, and wore a crisp, grey suit and polished leather boots. His face and hands were tanned, and his mouth was quick to smile, even with the cigarette hanging from it. 

 

“Please?” Jay asked in a voice so small he nearly could not understand himself. “Please? Just let me sit here for a little bit and I’ll be on my way home.”

 

“Soaking my backseat with ice water and blood.” The stranger deadpanned. “My wife is right. You Irish are nuts.”

 

Jay did not know what to answer to this and hid his face in the blanket again. His wet clothing clung to his skin, chaffing. He could not feel his toes anymore, despite the warm air blown from the heater. He shuddered and drew the blanket tighter around him, glancing at the stranger again, who was watching him contemplatively. 

 

“I’m taking you to a hospital,” the stranger said again, this time decisively. He stood and slammed the door shut, and Jay could hear the click of a children’s safety lock. 

 

Terror flooded him. If he was taken to a hospital, it would not be long before all of Enniskillen knew he had nearly drowned himself in the Erne. Worst of all, his parents would know. His mom would know. He had promised her he would not go to the river, and what had he done?

 

“Please don’t!” Jay shouted as soon as the stranger opened the driver’s door and sat down. “Take me to...”

 

Calm, grey eyes caught his in the rear-view mirror. “Take you where? To a graveyard? Because that’s where you’ll end up if you don’t get checked over, and I’ll not be held responsible. You can count yourself lucky I came along, kid.”

 

“Take me to Sister Ruth.”

 

“Who’s that?”

 

“A nun. She’ll look after me.” Jay struggled to free his arms from the blanket and gripped the edge of the driver’s seat to pull himself forward. Chagrined, he realized too late he was probably leaving blood from the cuts all over the upholstery. “She was a nurse before she became a nun. She’ll know what to do.”

 

It was a blatant lie, and he could only hope this man was indeed a tourist. But Jay knew Sister Ruth would take care of him, nurse or nun, and he could stay with her until his clothes were dry, and maybe she would understand and not tell his parents. 

 

The stranger gave a heavy sigh and gripped the steering wheel. A long moment of silence passed between them before the man started the car.

 

“You Irish are nuts. All right.”

 

Relieved, Jay let go of the seat and leaned back. He glanced at the upholstery – no blood. Frowning, he looked at his hands. The cuts were gone. He had been nearly in tears at the sight of them, those deep, ragged wounds, not bleeding anymore only because his hands had been nearly frozen stiff. Lost in the moment, Jay flexed his fingers and found he could move them without pain. 

 

He looked up and found the stranger’s eyes staring at him in the rear-view mirror. Reflexively, he pulled his arms back under the blanket.

 

\---

 

Doubt overcame him as the car pulled into Church Street. Sister Ruth was a very good friend of his parents’; surely she would inform them of his near death?

 

Near death?

 

He gripped his hands beneath the blanket and stared at St. Macartin’s Cathedral as they approached, straining his ears. There it was, faint beneath the sound of the car: his heartbeat. His heart had stopped beating as soon as he was underwater, this he was sure of. And it had not started beating again until he had been well out of the water, half up the bank of the Erne like a worm trying to burrow into solid ground. Only then, and with shocking intensity, had his heart started to beat again, slowly and steadily, then faster and steadily, as if nothing had happened, as though – 

 

\- as though his body had tried to shut down on him, to save him from having to breathe. Jay could taste the first mouthful of water still, but none had followed. 

 

He should have died there, in the icy water. 

 

The thought was frightening. It was more than he could take, and his mind fled from it. Shaken, Jay stared straight ahead, barely listening to the man chatting away. He had finally given his name as Sam; Jay had only reluctantly volunteered his. 

 

But he had broken so many rules today, ‘Don’t talk to strangers’ was a minor one. 

 

He should have died there. He should have – 

 

“Is this the place?”

 

The car came to a halt at the curb, St. Macartin’s looming into the sky to their right. Jay nodded and turned in the seat, shaking the blanket from his shoulders. He had to wait until Sam left the car and opened the door for him; once outside, Sam took him by the shoulders and critically looked him up and down. 

 

“You are one lucky kid, Jay.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“A kid your size? In that water? You could be dead.” Sam lowered his face to his, and Jay resisted the urge to step away from him. This man meant well. “You sure you’re going to be all right now?”

 

Jay nodded and glanced at the door to the cathedral, the gravel path cloaked in snow. “Yes. Sister Ruth will take care of me.”

 

He wanted to get away from Sam now, and he did not know why. The man had helped him, but Jay wanted to be as far away from him as possible. As if his wish had been heard, the door of the cathedral opened, revealing the figure of Sister Ruth as she peeked out into the cold. Even from a distance, Jay could see her eyes widen at the sight of him standing here with a stranger; his face broke out in a smile as she hurried down the gravel path toward them, concern on her face. He looked up at Sam and reached up, squeezing one large hand with both of his own to make the man let go. 

 

“Thank you, Sam.”

 

Sam looked down at him and smiled. His hands were heavy on Jay’s shoulders. After a moment, Jay realized Sam was not looking at him, but at his small hands around his. A feeling of unease crept up in him. Then Sister Ruth was standing next to them, flustered, nearly out of breath, and Sam released him into her loving arms.

 

“Good heavens! Jay, what happened to you?” She held him at arm’s length. “You’re soaking wet!”

 

Jay’s eyes were fixed to Sam’s as the man walked to his car and pressed himself against Sister Ruth, his arms tight around her. 

 

“Be seeing you, kid.”

 

Sam said it over his shoulder, but the words reached Jay as clearly as though he had whispered them directly into his ear. He watched the man drive off and felt much colder now than he had when the water took him. Jay pressed his face against Sister Ruth’s habit and inhaled her familiar scent. Her fingers tousled his still wet hair, and her voice, when she spoke, sounded sad and wistful.

 

“Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to ride with strangers? Oh Jay – what am I going to do with you?”

 

\---

 

Dry and feeling anxious, Jay crept up to his home three hours later, when the milky sun was beginning to dip past the horizon. He had stayed at St. Macartin’s, huddling in Sister Ruth’s bed, while his clothes hung over the oven to dry, sipping hot cocoa the nun made for him. In the end, Ruth had been more concerned than angry or reproachful when she finally learned what had happened. And she had promised him she would not tell his parents, if he promised her he would never do something so stupid again. That promise had been easily and willingly given; Jay knew, one way or other, that he tried to not think about what had happened at the Erne, just as he shied away from looking at his hands. He had no name for the state he was in. Floating somewhere between fear and a strange sense of satisfaction, and for some reason, the thoughts he tried not to think filled him with pride. His parents would never know what had happened. There were no bruises to bear witness to this afternoon’s disaster. 

 

He had almost forgotten all about Sam, too. The image of him walking toward the car, casually throwing a farewell over his shoulder, lingered somewhere on the edge of Jay’s consciousness, but was easily pushed away. 

 

Now, standing next to the porch of the backdoor, he was more concerned with his parents. Jay had never been a good liar; there were water stains on his clothes, and he remembered he had left his book at the bank of the Erne. If his mother asked him where it was, he would have to lie to her. He did not like lying to his parents. 

 

Cautiously, he opened the backdoor and slipped into the kitchen, relieved to find the place in front of the sink deserted. Through the open kitchen door, he could hear the TV newscaster talking about corn prizes and the weather. He crept through the kitchen and peeked through the door, seeing the back of his mother’s head above the top of the couch. His father sat in his customary armchair next to the couch, smoking his pipe. Jenny was nowhere to be seen.

 

The stairs. He knew them inside out. Knew where he had to take two at a time to avoid making them creak; he felt intense relief flush him for the second time this day as he reached the top of the stairway and opened the door to his room. 

 

Jenny was sitting on his bed, her arms crossed over her chest. There was a tight, angry expression on her face. 

 

“Where have you been?”

 

Jay closed the door and slipped out of his jacket, trying to appear casual. “Outside. Why?”

 

“I saw you creep across the yard like a thief.”

 

He glanced at the window; right, he had forgotten about that. From her window, Jenny had a perfect view of the garden and the small patch of forest. He turned his back to his sister as he pulled his sweater off and changed into a clean one, carefully folding the stained one.

 

“Sally called me.” Jenny’s voice took on a note of superiority. “You’ve been to see Ruth all afternoon. She saw you.”

 

He would not undress completely in front of his older sister while she sat on his bed and stared at him. Jay closed the doors of the closet and turned, hands clasped behind his back. 

 

“She saw you driving with a strange man, too. She lives in Church Street, and she’s just been home, and she said you were driving in a stranger’s car.” Jenny slipped off the bed and sniffed. “Mom’ll be angry if she hears this.”

 

“Jenny, please don’t tell!”

 

Jenny ignored his pleading words. “What were you doing with Ruth all afternoon?”

 

Why was she asking this? “We…we just talked.”

 

“You’re not special, you know that?”

 

Jay frowned. “What do you mean?”

 

“You’re always running around, always visiting Sister Ruth! She’ll get tired of you if you don’t stop running to her every day!”

 

Jenny’s words made no sense to him. “I’m not special…”

 

“No! You’re not!” Something on his sister’s face slipped, making way for an expression so full of anger Jay felt compelled to take a step back. “With your white hair and yellow eyes! The others at school laugh about you! And they laugh about me, you freak! They laugh at me because of you!”

 

“What - ?”

 

Jenny took a deep breath, hands fisted. Her lips drew back, revealing milky teeth. “You’re not even my brother! I hate you!”

 

As soon as the words left her mouth, Jenny’s eyes widened. She lifted a hand to her mouth and stared at him, breathing quickly and shallowly. Jay blinked, once, twice, trying to make sense of her words because they did not make sense to him. 

 

“Why do you say that?” he asked, frowning. “Why do they laugh at you? What do you mean?”

 

She stormed from his room and slammed the door. 

 

+++++

**Enniskillen 1984**

**North Ireland**

**April**

**+++++**

 

Miss Shelly, Jay’s history teacher, died a gruesome and tragic death one late night in April. Jay barely took notice of the news. He knew she had been driving home from visiting her family in the next city when her car drove off the street and wrapped itself around a tree, ending her life. The news of it roused suspicious talks in Enniskillen. Miss Shelly had always been a very careful driver; not once in her thirty years as a teacher had she had an accident. There were rumours of another car forcing hers off the road, but the police had found no evidence to ascertain those rumours. Yet, they lingered. 

 

Strange people were in Enniskillen. Jay had heard the old ladies at church whisper about it in the row behind him during mass. No tourists, no, worse than tourists. They asked questions and drove fast cars, roaring down Main Street in their sports vehicles, lingered at street corners and tried to mingle with the town folk. 

 

He listened to his parents as they talked about it at the breakfast table and avoided meeting their eyes, as he avoided Jenny’s across the table. Instead, he concentrated on breakfast and on the soft inside of his left wrist. Last night, when he knew everyone else was asleep, Jay had snuck into the bathroom and stolen one of his father’s disposable razors. With a heart beating so hard it felt as though it was trying to burst from his ribcage, he had set the edge of the razor against the skin of his left wrist by the dull light of his nightstand lamp, and when the skin parted like a red, wet mouth and smiled its razorblade smile, and the pain did not come, he had thrown the thing as far across the room as he could and cried himself to sleep. 

 

In the morning, ashamed of what he had done, he stripped the cover off his pillow and stuffed it into the waste bin. There were a few dried spots of blood on it, dull brown in colour. 

 

The razorblade smile was gone, leaving unblemished, soft skin. He found the razor under his desk, blood crusted on the edge. He kept it. 

 

\---

 

“Why do you never talk to me anymore?” Jenny complained loudly as they were on their way to school. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said. Okay?”

 

Jay walked next to his sister, book bag slung over one shoulder. He had been looking at the street in front of his feet until now, lost in thought. Now he looked up and studied his sister’s face.

 

They were so different. Jenny had dark hair and eyes, and even her skin seemed, although fair, shades darker than his. Although he was not much shorter than her anymore, she still seemed to tower over him, even as they walked. He studied her, and for the first time in his life, really noticed the differences between him and her – and between him and their parents.

 

He did not look the least bit like them. 

 

“Jay? Talk to me?”

 

He bled like everyone else, but he did not heal like everyone else. Why?

 

“Jay! Don’t ignore me!” A note of anger mixed into Jenny’s voice now. “I apologized, okay?”

 

“Okay,” he mumbled. 

 

They walked in silence. Ever since Jenny’s outburst in his room, Jay decided his sister had been behaving strangely around him. Avoiding him, treating him with care, refrained from calling him names as though she was afraid of something – or afraid of saying something. 

 

“Jenny?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Do they still laugh about you?”

 

She did not answer.

 

\---

 

She introduced herself as Miss Gooding and told them how sorry she was for Miss Shelly. 

 

Miss Gooding was young for a teacher, or so it seemed. She had long blonde hair and wore long woollen, tight skirts, and Sean whispered to Jay during break that another boy had seen her apply lipstick in her car before she made her way into the dean’s office. 

 

Miss Gooding came from London and was to be their substitute teacher until what she called ‘the bosses’ transferred another permanent teacher to this position. She herself had no intention of staying here because she had just married and her husband worked as a designer in London. 

 

When she spoke to the class, her eyes seemed to linger on each of them a little longer than was usual for a teacher. Or maybe Jay imagined it. 

 

She had clear blue eyes, and they were as cold as the waters of the Erne.

 

\---

 

“From London? That’s a long way to drive just to be a substitute teacher here.”

 

Jay watched Ruth sweep the long table in the hall of St. Macartin’s public room. “She said she rented a room at Maire’s hotel.”

 

“Still, it sounds off. They could have brought in someone from across the Erne. There are other schools nearby with teachers to spare.”

 

Sister Ruth seemed different today, Jay decided. Or maybe he imagined it.

 

\---

 

Children’s Hour was nearly over when Ruth held a finger to her lips and smiled secretively. “I have a gift for you. You’ve all been very good children this year so far, and I have a gift for you.”

 

Hushed voices whispered among themselves as the nun rose from her spot on the floor and left the room. Jay, sitting between Jenny and Sean, stared at the book in front of him, reading the words over and over again. He had been reading a lot lately, but there was no other book that fascinated him as much as the Bible did. It was like an adventurous fairytale! He could lose himself in the words and enjoyed the old stories, going so far as to nearly memorize them word for word. There was one he liked in particular. It told of Moses and how he parted the water of an entire sea to lead his people to safety. 

 

Reading that story made him feel warm and safe somehow. The knowledge that there were, or had been, people out there who cared so much for their own they even died for them stroke a chord in his heart so deeply he could have cried the first time he read the story. It was a welcome distraction as well; lately, Jay thought, there had been so many things happening to him that it was good not to think about them once in a while.

 

The Erne and its icy waters haunted his dreams with frightening intensity. He would wake at night drenched with sweat, nearly crying out and kicking, trying to get to the surface of the water all over again. In the beginning, he had tried to stay away during the night to keep the dreams at bay. But they would come at day, too. They did not leave him alone. 

 

The drums did not leave him alone. Dreams and drums, and razorblade smiles. Jenny’s hate-filled words that evening. 

 

Freak. 

 

It was so unfair! He was not a freak! It was not _his_ fault that his hair was white, or that his eyes were yellow. He had stood at the bathroom sink this morning and stared at his reflection, watching it staring back at him. 

 

The Lord had made man in his likeness. 

 

“Jay.”

 

Jenny’s hushed whisper made him look up. He followed his sister’s pointed stare down to the book in his lap and sucked in air; without thinking about it, he had gripped the Bible so hard its spine was nearly bent in his hands. He let go of the book as though he had burned himself and tried to smoothen out the crease in its cover with his fingers. 

 

“You really are a freak,” Jenny said softly, without malice. “Look at your hand.”

 

There was a cut in the centre of his right palm, leaking blood. Jay stared at it for long seconds and realized he had not only gripped the Bible hard enough to bend its spine, but also to cut his hand open on its cover. And he had not noticed! He evaded Jenny’s hand as she reached for him and hid his hand behind his back, shifting away from her.

 

“I’m not a freak!” Jay hissed.

 

The Dallimoore twins sitting in front of them simultaneously turned their heads and stared at him; thankfully though, any comment they might have made went under in a loud choir of cheering voices. Ruth emerged from the other room, carrying a bundle of folded cloth over her arm. Several children jumped up and ran over to her. Jay glanced at Jenny and looked away again as he saw her still staring at him with her mouth hanging open.

 

“You didn’t notice?” she whispered, appearing almost awestruck. “How can you not notice this?”

 

He wiped his palm on the floor behind his back and stood, ignoring her question. Inwardly, he was boiling. 

 

Idiot! Fool! You have to be more careful!

 

Scolding himself seemed to help a little. The fire in his belly subsided and made room for dull, looming anger at himself. He was not a freak. He was not a freak!

 

Jay looked up as Sister Ruth unfolded the bundle of cloth. It was square, and large, and beautifully coloured. She held it up so the children could see it and smiled as they cheered. There were angels on it, holding golden trumpets, and flowers, and a chalice. So finely woven was the cloth that Jay thought he could see the ruby liquid inside the chalice. He dug his fingernails into his injured palm and knew that the cut would be gone next time he looked at it. The razorblade smiles did not seem to want to last him. 

 

Sister Ruth handed the tapestry over to one of the Dallimoore twins – Jay could never keep them apart – and smiled as the children gathered around the twin, laughing and touching the cloth. Her eyes met Jays, and her smile slipped a bit, and Jay took a deep breath and bent to pick up the Bible and walked over to her. 

 

“I memorized this story,” he said, “about a man who parted water to lead his people to safety.”

 

“That’s very nice of you, Jay.” She smiled again and touched his face, stroking his cheek. Her touch was soothing and warm, and Jay wanted to forget the world around them. “What do you think of the tapestry?”

 

He turned his head and looked at it. Jenny had it now, holding it reverently. “It’s very beautiful. Where are you going to hang it up?”

 

“Oh, somewhere here in this room, I think. That way, everyone can come and look at it whenever you want.”

 

He was not a freak! “Sister Ruth? I have a question.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Am I a freak?”

 

Her smile slipped once again, and this time he could literally feel her surprise. “Of course not.”

 

“If a man can part water, is he a freak?”

 

“No. Who told you that?”

 

“What if people cut themselves and they bleed, but the cuts heal so quickly it’s as though they’ve never been there?”

 

“Jay! What are you saying?” Ruth put both hands on his shoulders and turned him so he was facing her. She shook him gently as he refused to meet her gaze. “Where did you read this? Have you been watching horror movies?”

 

He stared at the ground in front of his feet and kept silent. Around them, the voices of Jenny and the other children echoed off the stone walls with peals of laughter and happy shouts as the tapestry was passed around so each child could hold it once. He rubbed his thumb over the skin of his palm. The small cut was gone. 

 

\---

 

“Jay? Jay! Oh, there you are.”

 

Standing, his father seemed to fill the entire doorframe. His eyes twinkled as he stepped into the room and shut the door, and Jay, sitting in a large chair squeezed in between his desk and the closet, had to smile back as his father held a finger to his lips. From behind his back, he produced a large plastic bag filled with chocolate cookies. 

 

“Your mom is going to have a fit if she finds out we’ve been munching on these before dinner, so shh!”

 

Jay giggled, slipped off the chair, and ran to fling himself into his father’s free arm. “Okay! I’ll be quiet!”

 

They sat on the bed in the fading light of the day and ate chocolate cookies, and for the first time in weeks Jay felt as though he could forget the troubling dreams, the cuts, and the razorblade smiles. He leaned against his father’s strong frame and felt small again – well, he was still small in comparison to him, but not as small as he used to be. 

 

His father put an arm around him and sighed, wiping cookie crumbs from his beard. “That was good. What have you been up to, all cooped up here alone?”

 

“Oh…nothing. Thinking.” Jay took another cookie. 

 

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately.” His father’s voice took on a more serious tone. “Miss Gooding, your history teacher, called your mom today. She said you’ve become almost withdrawn in school.”

 

Suddenly, the cookie tasted stale. He forced the rest into his mouth and chewed mechanically, aware of his father’s eyes on him. What to say to this? 

 

“She said you have very good grades, but you seem to keep yourself apart from the other children,” his father went on after a while. “And just yesterday, I met little Sally Brand at the shopping centre with her mom. Mrs. Brand told me she’d seen you drive with a stranger in his car about two months ago.”

 

Time ceased its movement in this very second. Jay was thrown back to the Erne, to its icy water, and to Sam. Sam who had helped him. Sam who had wanted to drive him to a hospital. The last bite of cookie went down his throat like a dry, scratchy lump of paper. He shifted beneath his father’s comforting arm and fidgeted. 

 

“Jay…is there anything you want to tell me?”

 

Why was his father not angry? Quickly, Jay looked up at him, but instead of anger, he found only endless concern written in his warm eyes. He did not understand it – again and again, his parents had told him and Jenny never to ride with strangers, much less accept anything from them. He had anticipated his father to become angry because Jay had disobeyed this rule; instead, his father seemed only concerned now, careful, as though he was trying to ask something he was afraid of. His heart was beating very fast, too. Jay could feel its thudding beat against his shoulder where he leaned against his father. 

 

“Nothing happened,” he said quietly. “I…I was at the Erne.”

 

“Go on,” his father coaxed gently. 

 

“I…” he sighed. “I fell in.”

 

“You fell in? You fell into the Erne?”

 

“Yes. I was trying to get to Cherry Island and fell in. He wanted to take me to a hospital, but I said I didn’t want to because I was afraid…” Tears pricked at his eyes. He took a sniffling breath; it was not just the admission of that long ago disaster at the river, it was everything, everything that had been happening lately, which came to bear on him now, forcing the words from him so quickly he nearly did not understand himself anymore. “…I was afraid you’d be angry with me. He took me to Sister Ruth and drove away again.”

 

He was shaking now, shoulders heaving with the force of his sobs. “Please don’t be angry with me, dad!”

 

His father hugged him tightly and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “And…this man…did he do anything to you? Did he…touch you anywhere?”

 

Sniffling, Jay mutely shook his head no. He buried his face in his father’s shirt.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“He gave me a blanket and kept saying Irish are nuts.” Jay mumbled.

 

To his surprise, he could hear his father’s laugh reverberate through his chest, and subsequently through Jay’s body, at those words. He sniffled again and wiped the tears from his eyes and looked up at him. His father’s eyes were twinkling as merrily as they had when he entered Jay’s room. Jay was swept up into a tight hug.

 

“Yes, that we are. That we are.”

 

\---

 

+++++

**Enniskillen 1984**

**North Ireland**

**June**

**+++++**

 

“Jay? Come inside, please. I need to talk to you.”

 

Summer had finally begun, and with it, the endless, joyous stretch of summer vacation. Only two days ago, there had been much cheering and waving in school: Miss Gooding had said her goodbyes, announcing her time as a substitute teacher was over, and that she would return to London. After the holidays, someone from Ballaghmore Lough would come to permanently fill the position. 

 

Miss Gooding had brought candy and cake for the last history lesson she was to teach them. Instead of pouring over happenings of hundreds of years ago, she had told them of London, the great city, and of her husband, and how much she missed him. Her cold, blue eyes had seemed to glow from within as she spoke of him, and Jay imagined how it was, to miss someone so much that one’s eyes began to glow. 

 

He had been much surprised when, just before the last lesson began, math taught by boring and old Mister Boswell, he found Miss Gooding and Sister Ruth having a heated discussion in the hallway leading to the library. At first, he had wanted to join them, happy to see Sister Ruth, but the nearer he came to them, the more he became aware of their hissing voices. 

 

It had been the first time he saw Sister Ruth truly angry, and her red, tight face frightened him. So he remained on the middle of the stairwell and pressed himself against the wooden railing, hoping they would not notice him eavesdropping. The book he had meant to return to the library lay forgotten on the steps next to him. 

 

“You are not taking him with you!” Sister Ruth had said, her normally so soft voice a harsh whisper. “He’s a child, for god’s sakes! I won’t allow it! You’ve already killed his father! Isn’t that enough, you beast?”

 

Miss Gooding, calm and immaculate in her woollen dress – which was cut a bit more freely now, allowing the sun to warm her bare arms and shapely legs – had remained silent and watched Sister Ruth from narrowed eyes. 

 

“Leave him here. You’ll kill him, I know it! You’ll turn him into a drone like you tried to turn his father into a drone!” Sister Ruth went on. “I swear, if you so much as lay a finger on him, I’ll go to the police and tell them everything!”

 

Jay wished for the ground to open and swallow him whole. He did not recognize Sister Ruth! There was nothing warm and caring about her anymore; all of her seemed aflame, burning with anger so hotly Jay thought he could almost see it swath her frame and linger on her skin. Unwillingly, he picked up her heartbeat, listening as it raced in time with her words. 

 

Miss Gooding was a murderer? She had killed someone’s father?

 

“And who would believe you, nun?” Miss Gooding asked in a soft, friendly voice, and walked away.

 

Jay stayed rooted to the spot until Miss Gooding was out of sight. Then he crept back up the stairs and raced to his classroom. He did not look back to see if Sister Ruth had seen him or not.

 

“Jay? Are you listening to me?”

 

Memory fled him like a wisp of fog fading from beneath the trees, leaving him to stare up at the angel’s tapestry Sister Ruth had hung up on the wall facing the colourful stained glass windows of the room. The sun falling in through that window was warm; Jay liked to sit in its beams and watch dust trail through the air so much like leaves in an autumn storm. At Sister Ruth’s voice coming from the doorway, Jay blinked once, twice, and then shook his head. Three days had passed since the incident at school, three days during which he had avoided seeing her. He had even missed Children’s Hour on purpose.

 

There had been something about Sister Ruth, aflame with anger, which frightened him.

 

As he looked at her now, he only saw the caring, nurturing friend he had known for as long as he could remember. It brought a smile to his face, to see her standing there, smiling back at him. 

 

“I’m sorry, I was watching the dust.”

 

“My little daydreamer!” Ruth exclaimed in a soft voice, smiling wider. She stepped away from the doorway and parted the beams of the sun to stand before him and offer him a hand to pull him up from the ground. “I need to talk about something.”

 

“With me?”

 

“Yes. I think it’s time you…finally learned the truth.”

 

As most children can, Jay was able to tell from the tone of her voice alone that he would not like what she was going to tell him; the ‘what’ seemed insignificant for now. Had he done wrong again? He had been more than careful to not give anyone an opportunity to call him ‘freak’ again. Although things between him and Jenny were not what they had been before, Jay had made sure she had no reason to complain about him again. He had received a lecture on ‘going with strangers’ from his father after confessing the incident – near death – at the Erne, but even then his father had been kind and understanding, saying that they all had been young and foolish once.

 

Lately though, Jay had felt more old than young. The river’s cold water seemed to linger in the very marrow of his bones like a chill he could not quite get rid of. It was as though things had been put into focus a lot sharper for him. He had no name for the feelings, as he had no name for so many things that happened, but he knew he had gained a new awareness of the things around him, whether they moved or not. 

 

Looking at Sister Ruth as he took the offered hand and gained his feet, Jay knew something was off about her. Her grip on his fingers seemed a little less warm than usual, and he thought he could detect a fine tremor running through her own fingers as she led him from the main room into the adjacent chamber. There was no window made of coloured glass here, only a small, plain one. Jay sat down at the table and wrapped his hands around the tall glass of water she had put there for him. It was chilled, fresh from the fridge. He took a small sip and could not repress the shudder as once again, memory of swallowing that icy river water took hold of him.

 

“I don’t quite know where to begin,” Sister Ruth admitted once he sat. She remained standing, her fingertips lightly resting on the table. “Jay, I know you saw me and Miss Gooding this week. I saw you run up the stairs.”

 

He felt caught and did not know what to say, so he kept still and only nodded once.

 

“How much of our conversation did you hear?”

 

“Not much,” He chewed on his lower lip. “I heard you – has Miss Gooding really killed somebody?”

 

Sister Ruth sighed heavily and sat down in front of him. “Not…literally. But the people she works for have. I’m afraid they have killed a lot of people.”

 

“But…she’s a teacher.”

 

“She’s a spy.” Her voice hardened, and Jay looked up to see anger on her pale face. “She works for a group of very dangerous people. She only pretends to be a teacher, but she is very dangerous. Jay, if you ever see her again, run as fast as you can, do you understand me?”

 

He could only nod, his mind racing with questions and, unbidden, fear.

 

“Jay, when I – when I said somebody has already been killed, do you remember who?”

 

“You said someone’s father was killed. Sister, I – I don’t want to talk about this. It frightens me.”

 

Ruth reached across the table and pried one of his hands off the glass, wrapping it in hers. Jay could not get rid of the feeling that it was more to keep him from running away than comforting him. Her grip was harder now, almost cold.

 

“I was talking about your father, Jay.”

 

He looked up sharply. “What? But dad isn’t – what do you – my dad - ”

 

“William O’Siodhachain isn’t your real father. He and Ann adopted you when you were still a baby, too young to remember anything. They already had a child, Jenny, your stepsister. No, stay here!” 

 

The glass tipped over and rolled off the table, shattering on the ground. Jay yanked away from her grip and tried to flee from the room, but Ruth caught him before he reached the door and dragged him backwards, her arms like iron bands around his middle. For long minutes, Jay fought against her hold, carelessly kicking and hitting out, ignoring her sounds of pain as he hit her face several times. Finally, he hung limply in her arms, panting, his face pressed against her habit. There were tears on his cheeks, but from what, he could not tell. 

 

Perhaps because Ruth had done something he had thought she would never do. Lied. Lied to him. Telling him something that could not be true. His dad was his dad, just as Jenny was his sister!

 

_You’re not even my brother! I hate you!_

 

Jenny’s accusation sounded inside his head like whiplash. Jay gritted his teeth and buried his face deeper in the folds of Sister Ruth’s habit, willing the hateful words to go away. He felt her hands run up and down his back, soothing him, calming him. 

 

“I’m sorry, Jay, but you need to know. You _have_ to know this, or you won’t be safe anymore.” Ruth’s voice had dropped to a whisper as though she was afraid of someone listening in. “Please, Jay, listen to me. I know you don’t want to hear it, but you must listen to me, do you understand?”

 

Understand? Understand what? He shook his head and felt a sob rack his body. Fingers gripped his head and forced him to look up, and he shook anew as he saw the beginnings of a bruise beneath Sister Ruth’s left eye, where he must have hit her. Fresh tears began to fill his eyes.

 

“I didn’t - ”

 

“Shh, child, do not cry. I know this hurts. But it is important that you listen now, because I’m afraid we don’t have much time left.” Ruth wiped his cheek with two fingers, gripping his chin. “Miss Gooding, I think, went back to her group and told them of you. I’m afraid they’ll come for you very soon now, if they are not already here. Strange people have been in Enniskillen lately. I thought you’d be safe here.”

 

“I don’t – why would they come for me?”

 

“Jay…do you still hear the drums?”

 

He nodded mutely. 

 

“You have a gift, Jay, something only a few people possess. They will come for you and try to take you because of that gift, just as they - ” Ruth choked on a sob of her own but caught herself. “Just as they came for your father.”

 

“My dad is at home,” Jay said defiantly, sniffling. “He’s at home with mom and Jenny and - ”

 

“Your father is dead, Jay,” Ruth said harshly, her hands gripping his shoulders and shaking him lightly. “Would I ever lie to you? Would I?”

 

“…no.”

 

“Listen, Jay, there is much you don’t understand yet. When I gave you to Ann and William, we agreed on waiting a few more years until we told you, but now time is running out and they may be coming for you, like they came for your father. That Miss Gooding was here at your school cannot be a coincidence. Oh, if only I’d not be so blind as to think you’d be safe here!” Ruth took a deep breath and, still holding him tightly, brought her face very close to his. “Your father possessed a gift similar to yours. He was hunted down because of it, and Eszet killed him. The same must not happen to you.”

 

“…what’s Eszet?”

 

“Spies – demons. Miss Gooding is one of them. And I think that man – Sam – was one of them, too.”

 

He wanted to clasp his hands over his ears and he did not want to listen to her anymore. What she told him sounded incredible – lies, all lies. But Sister Ruth – she would never lie to him, would she? His head was spinning; the desire to run away surged once more in him, yet she seemed to sense it, somehow, and held him all the more tightly. He struggled uselessly for a moment and then again went limp. He was not going to listen to her anymore. He would not listen to anything she told him anymore. It hurt.

 

But Sister Ruth dragged him over to a locked chest standing beneath the window and forced him to kneel down with her. One hand still gripping his arm so tight it hurt, she unlocked the chest and opened the lid. 

 

“I’ll show you, Jay. I’ll show you everything now.”

 

There was a jumbled assortment of books, little boxes and papers inside the chest, some of the items yellow with age, others seemingly charred from a fire or something similar. Through tear-filled eyes, Jay watched her take a large, bound book from beneath a stack of documents. Ruth placed it on the floor between them and flipped it open. It was an old Bible. 

 

“I don’t have many photos – he never wanted me to take some of us, but I still managed to get two or three I think, when he wasn’t looking. Or maybe he was looking, and let me.” Her words came rapidly, as though she thought they were running out of time. “Look, Jay! Look! This is your real father.”

 

Ruth took a small stack of photos from between the yellowed, brittle pages and held them out to him. Reflexively, Jay turned his head to the side and closed his eyes.

 

“I don’t want to see them! Why are you telling me this? You’re hurting me!”

 

“You will be hurt far more than you can imagine if you don’t know the truth, child!” Ruth nearly shouted; breathing deeply, she moved closer to him, her voice suddenly warm and soothing again as she slowly pulled on his arm and held the photos closer to his face. “Look, Jay. Look at them.”

 

Almost against his will, he turned his head back around. Refusing to look, to really see, but when he stared at the photos, and an older version of himself stared back at him, he sat quietly, composed.

 

_You’re not even my brother! I hate you!_

 

The man on the photo, standing at the corner of a building or a wall, seemed tall even in comparison to the trash can next to him. He wore nondescript clothing; work clothing, of the kind many of the men in Enniskillen wore before they went out to the fields or the factories. His face was turned toward the photographer – and Ruth had said she took those photos – and there was an expression of surprise ingrained forever into the open curve of his mouth and the bows of his eyebrows. One of the man’s hands was partially raised, as though he had tried to hide his face.

 

He had white hair, parted down the middle, a few longer strands escaping from a ponytail, framing a sharp-boned, narrow face. Although the photo was in ill shape, its corners bent and its surface speckled with something that looked like burn marks, Jay could clearly see the light colour of the man’s eyes. They were yellow.

 

How long he sat and stared at the photo, Jay did not know. Time stretched infinitely, marked only by the thudding beat of his and Sister Ruth’s hearts. He realized he had picked up on her rhythm without meaning to; her heart beat faster than his, he learned after listening for a bit, and what was that? There were tears streaming down her face as she sat next to him, gazing at the photo with longing in her eyes. Her grip on his arm had lessened. 

 

For a very long, agonizing moment, Jay hated Sister Ruth with all he was.

 

When the feeling of wanting to burst at the seams left him, he was shivering uncontrollably and close to tears again. 

 

“Isn’t he beautiful?” Sister Ruth whispered, to herself. “Just like you. You’ll be beautiful when you’ve grown up.”

 

He did not know what to say, again, and so he said nothing. He did not want to look at the photos anymore, he did not even want to be in the same room with Sister Ruth anymore, not now, not today, and not when everything she had told him, everything he had just seen, made so much terrible sense to him it threatened to tear the air from his lungs. It felt so much like drowning. He stared down at his arm and expected them, the smiles, to open in his skin again; but this time they were laughing at him, mocking him. 

 

You’re not even who you think you are! You freak! You’re not even my brother! I hate you!

 

“Jay…there is something else you need to know.”

 

What more did she want to tell him? Had she not hurt him enough already? Why could she hurt him so much with words if razors could not hurt him? Jay dug his fingernails into his palm as hard as he could, but only dull pressure radiated from the skin. He stared at the chest, eyes too blind with new tears to look at the documents or the boxes. Lies. It was all lies. Nothing of this was true.

 

“I’m your mother, Jay.”

 

“Liar,” he whispered, the first word that came to mind. “You’re lying to me. You’re not my mom.”

 

“They tracked your father and me down a few days before you were born. They killed him. I brought you here and gave you to Ann and Will to protect you.”

 

“Liar.”

 

“Jay, please. I don’t lie. I’ve never - ”

 

“You lied to me all the time, then.”

 

He yanked his arm free and scrambled away from her, on hands and knees, finally getting to his feet as he reached the doorway. The stained glass window coloured his flight in pink and green as he ran through the room and through the door at the other end. Ruth was shouting for him, begging him to not run away, but Jay did not look back, and he did not stop.

 

\---

 

Sometimes, to run is the best way to stand still. 

 

\---

 

Jay’s lungs burned by the time he reached the house, stars dancing in front of his eyes. He had run all the way from the cathedral back home, nearly causing an accident as he crossed Church Street; now his heart hammered in his chest, and breathing had become an ordeal. He stopped at the back porch and bent over, snapping for air for a long while. 

 

As much as he tried, he could not hold a coherent thought. Getting away from Sister Ruth had been the prime idea, all the way from the cathedral back to home, but now, as he was home, the last place he wanted to be was home. Or maybe he wanted to be home, and fling himself into his dad’s arms, and hear his mom call him rascal again, and listen to Jenny call him nicknames. 

 

Jenny who hated him. Who was not his sister, according to Ruth.

 

Sister Ruth, who was his mother.

 

No.

 

Never.

 

He would go home now, and everything would be all right again. This afternoon, her words, her lies, had never happened.

 

Just as he had come back from Sister Ruth that other afternoon when he nearly drowned in the Erne, there was no one in the kitchen. Jay was overcome with a feeling of deja vue as he crept through the kitchen and saw the back of his mother’s head over the back of the couch; the only change in scenery was his father’s deserted place. But he could hear him, rummaging through something outside of Jay’s field of view. As he stood, silently, he heard him make a comment, and his mom’s answering chuckle brought a smile to his lips. 

 

This was home. This was the place where he belonged, where he was loved and safe and sheltered from everything outside. 

 

“Jay!”

 

The muted whisper caught him unawares and scared him. Jenny stood at the banister of the upper floor, arms crossed on the wood, a devilish smirk on her face as she looked down at him. He raised a finger to his lips and looked back into the living room; the scenery there had changed again, and now his father’s head was visible above the couch as well. Silently, Jay crept up the stairs to stand next to his sister.

 

“You’re finally home. Mom said she’d wait with dinner until you come.” Jenny sounded annoyed as she turned from the banister, pressing her fists into skinny sides. “You’re running around all day and because of you I’m hungry now.”

 

“I’m sorry, Jenny. I didn’t mean to stay away that long.”

 

He hoped she would not notice his reddened eyes and puffy face, but the scrutinizing look she gave him made short work of that hope. Raising an eyebrow, Jenny reached out and touched his cheek.

 

“Have you been crying? Your face’s all puffy.”

 

Shaking her hand off, Jay turned and walked toward his room. “No. Well, yes. I fell and hurt my knee.”

 

“You normally don’t cry when you fall.” Relentlessly, Jenny followed him, pushing into his room behind him. “And your pants aren’t torn at all. Liar.”

 

He wanted nothing more in the whole wide world than to be left alone now, Jay thought, but he knew from experience that trying to evade his sister made her all the more persistent. Jay turned and watched her watching him. So different. Dark and light, warm and cold. 

 

Maybe what Sister Ruth had – 

 

No! He would not think about it, not now, not ever.

 

“So what were you really doing?” Jenny asked. She closed the door and sat down on the edge of his bed, an expectant look on her face. “What have you been doing lately, anyway? We hardly do stuff together anymore. I apologized, remember?”

 

“Yes,” Jay said with a sigh. Tired now. More tired than he had ever felt in all his life. “Okay, I lied, and I’m sorry.”

 

“So why did you cry?”

 

“Because I was hurt.”

 

“By whom?”

 

“By…something someone told me.” He made a sharp gesture and turned to the window. “Jenny, can I ask you something?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Am I your brother?”

 

He wanted to hear her say “Yes!”, but the pause between his question and the beginning of her answer told him all he needed to know. Which shocking clarity, things began to fall into place. 

 

He felt surprisingly calm. 

 

“…no.”

 

He could not see the horizon beyond the trees bordering on their garden, he realized. All he could see was a thick swath of green, swirling like water colour. Or was he crying again? It felt like it. 

 

“How do you know?”

 

Jenny seemed to move on the bed – and her heart was racing, he heard – because she suddenly stood next to him, hands stuffed deeply into her pockets.

 

“I remember when they…brought you. And mom keeps telling me I’m only imagining it, so - ”

 

“Mom knows you remember?”

 

“I think so. Dad knows too. They told me not to tell you.”

 

 _Then why didn’t you lie just now?_ Jay’s mind screamed, its voice so loud it made his ears ring. 

 

“But you’re still my little brother, Jay. Mom said adopting someone is a sign of goodwill and love.” Jenny placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, and she suddenly seemed years older than him; older than him like Sister Ruth, telling him things he did not want to hear. “I’m really sorry about what I said. I – I get angry sometimes, because everyone looks at you and speaks about you, and I’m sorry. I know it’s stupid, you’re my brother after all.”

 

Jay ducked away from her touch and retreated to his desk, drawing breath as though he had been deprived of it. He could not look at Jenny now – knew what she would look like, anyway: face contorted, either with anger or with pain, because those two emotions seemed to provoke the same reaction from her, close to tears or already sniffling herself. 

 

“No. I’m not.”

 

He touched the desk, needing something solid to have under his hands. Something real, something that would not be blown away like so much dust – truth was elusive, Jay learned now, and it hurt. 

 

But truth, he learned as well, has the infuriating habit of choosing a corner of one’s mind to settle into and wait there to watch with glee as things unfolded around him. He could just imagine it – a small gnome, a wood sprite, cackling quietly and nastily. He wanted to hear its heart and slowly squeeze the life out of it.

 

“What do you mean?” Jenny asked. “Jay, look – oh God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”

 

“He’s a liar, too,” Jay said softly. “Everyone here is a liar. Even Ruth.”

 

“Sister Ruth? Did you see Sister Ruth today?”

 

He nodded, seeing the desk in front of him, and yet not seeing it. His fingers moved, trailing over paper scribbled with his children’s hand scrawl, coloured pencils, his history book. Homework. Right, he needed to do his homework.

 

“I don’t think you – I don’t think Sister Ruth would lie to you.”

 

“But she died. Everyone did.”

 

Jenny moved toward him, to touch him, maybe, and Jay did not want to be touched. He grabbed the first thing off the desk he felt beneath his fingers and wildly swung it at her. The clearly audible thwack! as his fist connected sharply with her chest startled them both. Both bent their heads and looked down, and both saw Jay’s fingers curled tightly around the end of a coloured pencil, and the spreading bloodstain marring Jenny’s shirt. 

 

Jenny took a stumbling step backward, her mouth open in surprise. The pencil did not seem to want to let go of her easily; it stuck where it was as Jay’s fingers slipped through the blood. She stumbled again and hit the bed.

 

“Ow…mommy…”

 

Jay stood rooted to the spot, his hand raised in midair between them, as Jenny turned and fled from his room. He heard her steps on the stairs and her cries. Stared at his hand. 

 

He was running before he knew it.

 

Down the stairs, and he could hear their voices raised in agitation and surprise as Jenny reached the kitchen seconds before him, screaming now, her thin voice piercing and bright. The smell of baked pie gently wafted up toward him. He reached the foot of the stairs and was nearly tumbled over by his father as William O’Siodhachain raced from the living room. 

 

“Mommy! Mommy! It hurts! Mommy!”

 

“Oh my god! Jenny!”

 

Jay reached the doorway to see his mother turn from the sink, soapy hands reaching out in haste to catch her collapsing daughter. Then Jenny’s form was hid behind his father’s broad back. He saw her stocking-clad feet trash as she wailed. 

 

“What happened? Jenny! What is this?” William O’Siodhachain had to shout to be heard over Jenny’s cries. Jay did not know what his father was doing, but Jenny’s wails evolved into a scream, and then Jay’s eyes followed the coloured pencil as it sailed through the kitchen and hit a cupboard, leaving a splatter of blood before it bounced to the ground and rolled under the table. 

 

“Jay stabbed me! Ow, mommy, it hurts so much!”

 

His father turned, eyes wide. Jay shrank a step back as he saw him. “What have you done?”

 

His mother looked up, too, an expression of pain and shock on her face. “Jay?”

 

Jay shook his head, a scream on his lips dying as his father rose and stormed toward him. They would punish him. He had stabbed his own sister! They would send him away! They would – 

 

“Don’t touch me!” Jay screeched, seconds before his father’s large hands close on his shoulders.

 

It felt like a heat wave, rising from his toes to his throat. Everyone around him screamed. Something hit the front of his sweater; red, red, like Jenny’s blood, in his mouth, running down his throat. Breaths turned into hiccups. He looked up and saw dark liquid cascade from his father’s mouth. And nose. And ears.

 

And Jenny was still screaming, as was his mother, hugging her tightly as the body of his father crumbled to the kitchen floor, boneless, dead. Jay’s ears rang. 

 

“Stop screaming!”

 

He was left with Jenny’s screams as Ann O’Siodhachain’s eyes rolled up into her head. Jenny caught between the floor and her, their, mother’s body as she fell forward, boneless, dead. Jay had heard people scream before. He knew what it sounded like. Jenny screamed as long as her breath held. Took a breath and started screaming again, one after the other, and dainty feet thrashing against the floor she screamed still as he moved forward, legs wooden, fingers clenching.

 

“No! Don’t touch me! Go away!”

 

“Jenny…!”

 

“Mom! Dad! Mom!” His sister took a breath. “Help!”

 

There was a kitchen knife, wet and soapy, lying next to Jenny and his mother. His mother must have dropped it as she turned to Jenny’s screams of pain. 

 

“Jenny, be quiet! They’ll hear you! They’ll take me away!”

 

Jenny screamed until he pressed both hands over her mouth, and she screamed again after her teeth made him pull his hands back with a hiss. 

 

“Jenny!”

 

Jenny screamed and only stopped when he beat his fists against her head, her face, her chest. Screams were replaced by chokes and gasps, and Jay was pleading with her to be quiet. He did not know how the knife ended up in his hand. But he knew Jenny stopped screaming because he stabbed it into her chest, right next to where he had stabbed her with the coloured pencil.

 

\---

 

Go now, before it’s too late. It can only go downhill from here on.

 

\---

 

As if through a great fog, he heard Sister Ruth calling for him. A dream. 

 

Jay smiled.

 

It had all just been a bad dream.

 

But why then was the floor so red?

 

Hands gripped him, shaking him roughly. A voice, Ruth’s voice, much nearer now, shouting at him, and she sounded as though she was going to start screaming or crying any moment now. He refused to listen and kept his eyes closed, and when the shaking became too insistent, Jay screamed himself, loud and clear, and flung his hands out until she screamed, too.

 

The knife. He was still holding the knife.

 

He opened his eyes and licked dry, cracked lips, wondering why his mom, dad, and Jenny were lying on the floor around him. 

 

“Oh god, Jay…what have you _done_?”

 

He looked up. Ruth leaned against the sink, one hand pressed against her abdomen. He blinked and saw a small bloodstain through the gap between her fingers. She was crying. 

 

“I…” Again, he looked at his mother, father, and sister, and closed his mouth. His feet slipped as he tried to stand. Blood. There was so much blood.

 

He could not hear a single drum.

 

But no, there, there was one. His own. Loud, clear and strong, telling him he was alive. And beneath it, Sister Ruth’s heart, erratic and wild. His own was calm and unaffected by what was around him. 

 

At least there was one steady thing that stayed when all others went away. Jay licked his lips again and tasted blood. The bottom of his sweater was nearly drenched with it. He tried to shape words and could not. There was nothing to say. He wanted to say he was sorry. But he knew the dead did not listen.

 

The dead could not speak.

 

He nearly fell as he ran toward Ruth, arms raised, wanting her to be quiet and not speak anymore. She was speaking, quickly, rapidly, barely drawing breath between words; that all stopped as he collided with her, but his aim, he found, was off. Ruth’s hands wrapped around the length of the blade before he could stab her.

 

If Ruth was dead, then she would not tell him lies anymore, Jay decided. There would be no one to tell of what he had done. 

 

But Ruth did not let go of the knife and held it, even as the edges cut her palms open and her blood joined that of his father’s – and mother’s, and Jenny’s – on his sweater and the floor. He attempted to wrestle free of her grip, but his heart was not in it. No, his heart beat steadily, unaffectedly, and with it a calmness he had not known before swept him into a tight embrace.

 

**+++++**

**Ballyvaughan 1985**

**Harding Street**

**September**

**+++++**

 

There it what again, that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. It began as a pulling sensation slowly spreading through his gut until it reached his heart, laying a large, cold fist around the beating organ with a ferocity that made him think of a giant slowly crushing the life out of him. He recognized the feeling like a family member, let in through the front door but barely welcome; an impeding sense of danger, a warning sign, that was it, and nothing more.

 

The boy, hardly more than a waif in his child’s clothing, hands grubby with dirt and cheeks flushed with strain, pressed himself against the brick wall of old Marty’s store and tried to make himself invisible. He had barely slipped away from the group last time they came for him; only his knowledge of Ballyvaughan’s crumbling streets had saved him from a fate so cruel he could barely imagine it. His mother had warned him about them, these men and women with the friendly faces and long hands. Outsiders, they were, prowling the streets much like he did, yet where Jay tried to survive, they were trying to catch him. His mother had said they would come for him no matter where he ran. 

 

Was that a sound of footsteps nearing the corner? Jay slipped backward until he met another brick wall and looked up. The small alley behind old Marty’s store was a dead end; stupid, he should have remembered that before he ran into it. There were only a few bent garbage bins and crumbled paper to keep him company as he crouched into a small ball between a large dumpster and a heap of shed wood old Marty used to heat the store. What did he have on him that he could use to defend himself? A small pen knife in his pocket, which was hardly of any use to him now. Though he had not yet seen one of his pursuers pull a gun, his mother had told him they carried guns. 

 

Jay looked at the ground and saw a piece of brick beneath an overflowing garbage bag. Hastily, the boy crawled toward the bag and grabbed the sharp-edged piece before he hurried back to his place between the dumpster and the wood. Brick pressed to his chest with trembling fingers, he eyed the other end of the alley with a racing heart. Although the sound of footsteps had faded, he could not rid himself of the mental image of a man standing just around the corner, listening in on him just as he listened in on the man. It would be a tall man, at least three or four heads taller than Jay, with large, long hands and a friendly face. He would wear the clothes of a tourist and maybe even a trench coat like that agent he had once seen in a movie together with Sean and the others. 

 

Where were the others? Where were his friends? Probably down at the Galway Bay where the tourists flocked together like sheep. The bay was the favourite place of the boys and girls of Ballyvaughan. In the summer, they could swim in the branding sea and search for shells, in the winter the shore had something magical about it. Jay had seen neither season yet since he arrived in Ballyvaughan, but Sean and his sister Maire had promised him they would go down to the shore together then. 

 

But where were they now, that he needed them? He felt alone and abandoned in this dead end alley with a piece of brick as his only weapon. Maybe he could risk a dash and run around the corner to the left. But what if they were waiting on both sides? What if they were just waiting for him to make a sound until they came around the corner with their long hands and friendly faces?

 

His eyes fell on the back door of old Marty’s store. He knew it was locked, but maybe if he pounded really hard old Marty would hear and let him in? The storekeeper had a soft spot for the children of the streets, although he had once threatened Jay to flay him alive if he ever caught him stealing again. Old Marty always said they should ask if they wanted something, and not steal. Shamefaced and sniffling, Jay had put the apple back where it belonged and run outside. 

 

Something hit the back of his neck from above. It was a tiny piece of stone or something similar, maybe dirt, nothing more, but it shocked him to the bone and froze him in his crouched position. He felt his fingers squeeze the piece of brick so hard he cut his palm in several places.

 

“Don’t run away. We’re not going to hurt you.”

 

With a burst of speed born from pure desperation, Jay flung himself forward and landed on hands and knees, the brick flying from his hand. He did not turn to hear heavy boots hit the ground behind him, and scrambled to his feet, the open end of the alley suddenly a faraway haven. Behind him! They had gone around the house and climbed the wall while he waited and listened on the other side!

 

“Wait! Jay!”

 

A large hand wrapped into the back of his sweater and pulled him back against a tall body. Jay flung his arms out and uttered a sound that scared himself, something between an animal’s haunted howl and a human’s angst-filled scream. He kicked with his feet, but the person behind him lifted him off the ground and wrapped strong arms around him.

 

“No! Let me go!”

 

“Jay, no! Don’t struggle!” 

 

He smelled something then, a bitter, acid stench from somewhere nearby. The person who held him tightened their arms around his body to keep him still. Out of the corner of his eye, Jay saw a second person, a woman, climb down the wall. She was tall and lean and carried a piece of white cloth in her hand as she approached them, and when Jay looked at her eyes, he saw a hunger in them that scared him more than he had ever thought possible.

 

_They will devour you, Jay! They will eat your soul and rape your body!_

 

Jay screamed again, this time the high-pitched sound of a child in fear, and kicked back as much as he could. The heel of his sneaker hit something solid, followed by a rough course near to his ear, and then he was shaken much like a dead rabbit in a dog’s maw. Something pulled painfully in the side of his neck as he was whirled around, still held off the ground, to face the woman who stood still now, one eyebrow raised.

 

“He’s a lively one.”

 

Her voice was cold and lacked any kind of inflection. Jay, even in his fear, had to think of a robot as he heard her talk. His eyes widened as she clucked her tongue and advanced, lifting the cloth. The bitter stench grew heavier the closer she came. What was that smell?

 

“Don’t worry, little one. This will only take a second.”

 

They were going to poison him! 

 

He kicked with all his might and turned his head, burying his teeth into the arm of the man who held him. The toe of his right foot caught the woman in the ribs and sent her stumbling back with a gasp as she bent over, taking deep, whooping breaths and cursing him. Jay did not hear. The arms around him had loosened slightly after his bite, but now they were again shaking him like a dead rabbit. 

 

“Little piece of shit, hold still! Or do you want me to kick your ass before we bring you in?”

 

Jay pushed.

 

His mother had warned him not to use the push. She had told him it would attract too much attention, that the people who hunted him would smell it, see it, feel it, and use it like a beacon to track him down. She had clasped his small hands to her heart, back then, months ago, her cut palms smearing his skin with red, tears in her eyes, pleading. Jay had been terrified at what he had done, angry, confused – calm.

 

The arms around his middle loosened as though the strength had been cut out of them with a knife. Jay hit the ground with a loud sob and darted forward, stumbling over his own feet and falling. He bit the inside of his mouth and tasted blood and began to cry. He crawled forward on hands and knees, but the light reached him before he made it out of the alley. It snatched him by the toes and held him to the ground, tingling up his legs like a trickle of cold water until it reached his waist and chest. He saw his own shadow in front of him and screwed his eyes shut when the light threatened to spill into them. 

 

Then everything was warm and velvet. He heard the heavy thuds of something hitting the ground behind him and cried harder, rolling into a small ball on the ground. He just wanted this all to end! This nightmare had to be over sometime! 

 

“What the hell - ” 

 

Fear gripped him once more. He lifted his head and opened his eyes and saw two men standing before him, less than five feet away. They were staring at him, then at the two behind him. Jay knew the two behind him were dead. They always died when he pushed. Why couldn’t they leave him alone? If they did not come after him, then he would not have to push! 

 

“Leave me alone!” He pushed to his knees and felt vertigo threaten to throw him back to the ground as he stood. The faces of the two men before him were slack with surprise. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

 

The smaller of the two stepped toward him, hands raised.

 

Jay screamed and pushed again.

 

**+++++**

**London 1992**

**Hungerford Railway Bridge, North Bank**

**February 12** **th**

**+++++**

 

He terrorized London and London’s suburbs for nearly five months before they finally managed to arrest him one late winter night, when the fog crawling up onto the Embankment on either side of the river looked so much like cotton, and smelled like cotton candy laced with a subtle poisonous stench. The cold wind had the city in a tight grip, tighter than in years before, leaving ice flowers on windows and frostbite on faces and hands; much of the city’s crumbling gothic flair hidden beneath a thick sheath of ice and snow, even the dull sounds of Big Ben’s brass bell seemed muffled by ice crystals hanging in the air. 

 

He had come to London in the dying throws of summer and spattered blood over golden leaves and concrete warmed by a golden sun, making London’s crooked alleys and cobble-stoned streets lose some of their picture book and fairytale charm. To a city that had spawned Jack the Ripper, the arrival of Jay O’Siodhachain did not mean much, at first. His first two kills were put down to an overly imaginative and highly deranged copycat-murderer trying to emulate old Jack’s famous deeds. They made it onto the front page of The Sun, London’s boulevard paper, but were not mentioned otherwise. 

 

Victims number three and four were never found. 

 

Victim number five was Edna Wheely, an elderly lady of South Kensington. Her death did finally arouse the interest of the London Times newspaper, and subsequently, the women and men of Scotland Yard. Dragged off the street in broad daylight with not a single witness in sight, Edna Wheely had been eviscerated with a small, sharp knife shaped like a hawk’s talon, her mortal remains artfully arranged beneath a weeping willow in the courtyard of the Brompton Oratory near Brompton Road. 

 

It was not the guts strewn all over the place that caught the attention of both newspapers and the police. It was not the blood. It was the message stuffed into Edna Wheely’s mouth in place of her tongue. Neatly folded, neatly written, it said: “Catch me if you can.”

 

They tried for five months. In the end, they caught him because he let them.

 

He was the devil. He earned the nickname when the majority of his victims were found in or around sacred ground all over London and its suburbs. All his victims died by the blade, and Scotland Yard never managed to figure out a conclusive profile for a killer who was as elusive as his motives. His victims came from all ages, both genders, all classes. 

 

On February 12th, a frenzied woman called Scotland Yard from her apartment near the Hungerford Railway Bridge. By the lights of the South Bank Centre reflecting eerily off the frozen river Thames, she had witnessed a tall male in black clothing drag someone onto the crusting ice over the river and leave them there, beneath the bridge, like a macabre offering to a river god caught beneath still waves and dirt. 

 

The devil had killed his 32nd victim. When a small army of cops and law enforcers, all armed to the teeth, arrived at the bridge, he was waiting for them on the Embankment, close to the Charing Cross Pier. Back turned to them as they approached, the devil leaned against the stone banister, his breath white even in the fog crawling up the river’s banks. Chin down to his chest, he turned slowly when prompted by the nudge of a gun between his shoulder blades; many of the men and women of Scotland Yard involuntarily averted their eyes as he looked at them. The devil had yellow eyes and the face of an angel. 

 

He was fifteen years old.

 

\---

 

The best place to hide is still in the eye of the storm, Jay O’Siodhachain thought as they wheeled him through the doors of the Gallagher Hospital for Juvenile Delinquents and Mentally Unstable Teenagers. Five heavily armed men in body armour had surrounded the stretcher he was strapped into on the long drive from London to wherever he was now; the same guards accompanied him into the institute now. Somewhere near London, supposedly. The long and brittle arm of justice would not want one such as him too far out of reach – out of sight, yes, but never out of reach. 

 

He hung after his thoughts as they rolled him through silent halls, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Bland plaster, here and there broken up by the sight of a vent, passing quickly. Lights set into the ceiling, covered with metal netting. The staccato of combat boots on a floor that had to be covered with something that made the sounds duller. Linoleum, maybe. He remembered Big Ben’s brass bell, so far away that night two months ago. Like a mourning song then, a dear memory now. Jay moved his arms and felt his skin chaff against the heavy leather straps holding his wrists down; out of the corner of his eye, he saw the guard walking to his left frown down at him and grip the Billy club he carried a bit tighter. The man was a bull; thick-necked, fish-eyed, more face than head, bulging muscles threatening to burst the seams of his uniform, his name tag declaring him to be Officer Shawl. 

 

“Hold still you little piece of scum, or I’ll make sure you do.” 

 

The words reached his ears but not his mind; Jay had already lost interest in the man walking next to him. He fixed his eyes on the ceiling again and counted the water stains and cracks in the plaster. Two months. Two months of shoving and being shoved; three ‘institutions’ had been in consideration when it came to housing Jay O’Siodhachain, and two of them had filed for relocation after several other patients who had been in contact with him died under mysterious circumstances. 

 

Pushing had become shoving had become getting rid of annoyances. Jay let his eyes slide shut and breathed in deeply, detecting a hint of salt in the stuffy air. 

 

If the authorities had their will, he would not see the outside world again for minimally 20 years before a committee of four independent criminal psychologists could declare him fit for reintegration into the society he had cut such a large and bleeding chunk out of. Even if that ever happened, the closest he would come to true freedom was the prospect of heavily supervised housing and intensive counselling behind thick stone walls. To him, that freedom did not seem much different from where he was being placed now. 

 

Somewhere close to the sea. 

 

The wheels of the gurney bumped over an uneven spot on the floor as they turned a corner and rolled him down yet another seemingly endless hallway. He turned his head and saw small windows up high, near the ceiling, casting a cheesy light onto him and his guards. The glass of those windows had to be at least three inches thick and was probably bullet-proof. Meant to keep inside what should not get outside and ironically, meant to protect what was inside from the wrath of what was outside. It was not a rare occurrence of someone getting murdered by a relative of those said someone had murdered before. Revenge in all its forms was still the best way to put a troubled mind to rest. 

 

“Take a good long look, asshole. That’s the last you’ll see of the world outside for a very long time.”

 

Jay turned his head and saw Officer Shawl extend the Billy club toward him in what would undoubtedly result in a rough prodding of the ribs. The man had been dropping snide remarks for as long as he had been assigned to watch him; Jay was rapidly tiring now, longing to be away from the guards and on his own. He located Officer Shawl’s heartbeat among those he could hear closest to him and singled it out, closing invisible hands around it. Eyes fixed on Shawl’s he could see the brief flash of insecurity before he caused the other man’s heart to beat faster.

 

Jay’s lips moved behind the mouth guard covering half his face, soundlessly forming a single word, before his brow creased and his mind focused inward, turning the subtle command into a brutal shove. 

 

Shawl fell sideward and hit the ground like a sack of bones.

 

Jay whispered, “Bye,” once more for good measure before he turned his attention back to the ceiling. 

 

\---

 

“I am the ‘I’ in ‘die’.” He sighed and dropped the card into his lap. 

 

“What do you feel when you say that, Jay?”

 

“Nothing.” 

 

The doctor sitting on a plastic chair crossed her legs and leaned back, making a note in the folder on the table before her. She seemed vaguely dissatisfied with his answer; for three hours now, she had handed him cards through the small slot in the glass wall between them and asked him to read aloud what was written on them. The guard standing behind Jay made sure he returned those cards.

 

“You don’t feel anything?”

 

“No. You’ve been handing me cards with things I said on them. Things I said in court. What am I supposed to feel?”

 

Her name was Sarah Franklin. She was one of Gallagher’s countless men and women in white coats, a certified psychologist with degrees in criminal profiling and aberrant behaviour in children and adolescents. Ever since Jay had been delivered into the care of the institution two weeks ago, the woman had taken a special interest in him. He had not yet made up his mind if it was genuine concern for his wellbeing and ‘healing’, or curiosity about the workings of a mind interested in all things abnormal. 

 

After what they called a integration process, which basically included being read his rights inside the institution and then left alone for two days to come to terms with his new situation, Doctor Franklin had been the first to raise her hand when it came to trying to solve the puzzle Jay O’Siodhachain’s mind obviously was. She was young by the standards of what one would expect a seasoned shrink to be. Barely past her thirties, face largely free of wrinkles, perfectly manicured fingernails, her lean curves fitting into the white doctor’s coat as though she had had the garment tailored. The first time he had seen her, Jay had been reminded of his mother – correction: stepmother. The woman had had the same dark brown hair and warm eyes, a feature that had been passed on to Jenny, Jay’s stepsister. 

 

And yes, perhaps Franklin even bore some sort of resemblance to his real mother. It angered him, partly because every time Franklin stepped through the door, Jay had to remind himself that one of the two female figures from his past was dead, killed by his own hands, and that the other – his real mother – was hiding in a monastery somewhere as far as he knew. Hiding because of him, or for him.

 

It also installed a small amount of concern in him. He did not know how far the institute was informed about his family background, but the thought that Franklin had been chosen to monitor him because she resembled two female figures from his past was not something he could easily ignore. During his trial, both the police and later the lawyer who had been assigned to him, had tried to coax something about his past out of him, and Jay had studiously ignored the questions. The less these people knew about him, the better. It was still very much possible that They would find him, even here, in a place where he was safe, and where everyone else was safe from him. 

 

They knew he had been born and raised in Ireland. A linguist had put his birthplace somewhere in the north of the country due to his accent. An extensive research, demanded by the court, had even revealed a few of his past locations, small towns such as Ballyvaughan where people vaguely remembered a boy with white hair and yellow eyes; but that was where it ended: Jay’s real mother had made sure her son’s heritage would be kept a secret. Although the happenings that had started him on his path lay almost ten years in the past, he still remembered her hushed words and urgent tone of voice. How no papers existed, how birth records had been destroyed by a doctor who held his mother dear, how the family that had adopted him had been all too happy to hide the fact that Jay was not of their blood.

 

He remembered, all too well, the tears in her eyes when she told him his secret was safe, because the three people who had known about his heritage were dead now, killed – no, sent to heaven by Jay’s own hands. 

 

“Jay, you have to work together with me on this one.” Doctor Franklin folded her hands on the table between them and regarded him through the bullet proof glass separating her from her patient. “We’re not going to make any progress if you don’t open up to me.”

 

“Why would I want to open up to you in the first place?” 

 

He had been given insight into his own file, a little, and he remembered what the profilers in court had said. He was largely believed to be a pure sociopath, with sadism and a warped view of the world thrown in for colour. One of his persecutors had tried to bring a little sexual disorientation into the mix, but the attempt, viewed with vague amusement not only by Jay but also by the cops who had hunted him for five months, fell flat. His answer to the question if he felt aroused by the sight of a helpless victim had silenced the court and the man who asked.

 

“ _Why should I rape someone if I can kill them?”_

 

Where did it come from, this urge to kill? Was it really an urge? Or was it boredom? Jay leaned back in his chair and saw the guard straighten up and move a little closer to him. The man bore a striking resemblance to Officer Shawl, who had left Gallagher feet first. The same fishy eyes, the same thick neck; Jay had watched the guard, Brian-last-name-unknown, on the way from his cell to the treatment room, and decided he was old and slow. But he was tall, with bulging muscles like Officer Shawl, and there was a hint of steel in his blue eyes. At least 250 pounds, if not more; his blood moved sluggishly through his veins, his heartbeat was steady and even, and one of his meaty hands always hovered close to the Billy club hanging from a loop of his belt. 

 

What would it be like, to kill Brian? Leisurely, Jay contemplated the idea. He would start with his lungs, or maybe his muscles. He would watch those fish eyes bulge until they threatened to pop from their sockets. Brian’s tongue would be swollen and protruding from his mouth by the time his lungs had stopped working, his face would be red, and he would be grappling at his throat and trying to loosen the pressure that came from within. By that time, he was as good as dead, and Jay would have little to do to finish him off completely.

 

He turned his head and regarded Doctor Franklin, who stared back at him, one eyebrow raised. Had she asked a question? Jay blinked twice and let his mouth fall open a little, wetting the corner of his mouth with the tip of his tongue. He let his eyes lose focus and moved his hips, rolling them up as though he was thrusting against someone else’s body in a lewd mimicry of intercourse. Resting the tip of his tongue between his lips, he uttered a small keening sound, delighting in the frown of annoyance that passed her face. How often did she sit across from one of her patients who not only mimicked the motions but vocally offered them to her?

 

Doctor Franklin shook her head and nodded at the guard. “He’s zoning out. Return him to his cell.”

 

It always worked. 

 

He had to make slow shuffling steps on the way back through the endless corridors. His ankles were connected with a sturdy chain that allowed little movement, his wrists similarly confined. The guard, Brian, walked a few steps behind him, twirling his Billy club. 

 

How often had he walked this way in the last two weeks? He counted the metal doors to his right, ignoring the pale sunlight streaming in through the small windows to his left. Each door bore a small plate with a number on it. A few of them had peepholes, but the majority was sturdy and plain, the young people behind them safe from the outside and the outside safe from them. He heard them sometimes, in the night, when he lay awake and stared at the ceiling. There was a window in his cell, so high up he had to jump to see outside. No windowsill, so he could not pull himself up. The glass was thick and dirty; but Jay did not need to see the outside. He knew what was outside, past the high walls and electrified fence. 

 

The best place to hide is in the eye of the storm. 

 

They reached the door at the end of the corridor. He had to stand with his face to the far wall while Brian unlocked it and swung it open. 

 

“You know the procedure. Get in, lie face down, and I’ll open the cuffs. If you move, I’ll shove your head against the floor and break your nose, maybe even your jaw. Got it?”

 

Jay turned from the wall and cast a glance at Brian. The fish eyes were watching him complacently. He stood with an ease that belied his slightly faster heartbeats. Jay hobbled into the cell – four walls, light grey, one window, one bed, mounted to the floor, a small round table, also mounted to the floor – and dropped to his knees. The cuffs dug into his skin as he lay down. There was something slightly obscene about the position – with his hips raised partially because of his hands under his stomach. Was that intentional? Was that a way to show him and the others how exposed, how under control they were here in Gallagher? 

 

But there was nothing sexual about the way Brian knelt down next to him, one knee pressing into the small of Jay’s back, further adding to the strain on his wrists. He heard the clinking of keys and the shift in weight as the cuffs around his ankles were undone and pulled off. Jay turned his head to the other side and saw Brian’s lower body from close-up, then felt the warning shove that took some skin of his forearm as the guard ground his knee deeper into the small of his back.

 

“I said don’t move.”

 

Jay made a small sound in the back of his throat, something between a whimper and a keen, and felt the pressure ease off almost immediately. So, dear Brian had a soft spot for the lost younglings of Gallagher after all. That was something to be filed away for later contemplation and use. Jay let his eyes slide shut and obeyed as he was told to roll onto his back. He opened them again as the chain links rattled through the metal slings of the handcuffs and looked up at the guard.

 

“I’ll take the cuffs off now, and you’re not going to move a muscle. Got it? Don’t even think about running away, there’s no place you can go or hide inside here.”

 

Jay nodded.

 

Brian gathered the cuffs and chains into one hand and rocked to his feet with a creaking of bones that did not go unnoticed by Jay. 

 

“Now you lie there till I’m out of the room and locked it, you hear?” At Jay’s nod, Brian began to walk backward until he reached the door. There he stopped and shook his head, staring down at the prone figure on the floor. “I can see why they call you the devil, boy. With those eyes of yours, you sure look like the old man himself.”

 

Jay allowed himself a thin smile. “You’re not too far off. And my name is Jay, not ‘boy’.”

 

A bellowing laugh broke from the guard’s mouth. “That’s what they all say, Jay, until they’ve been here for a couple of months and the shrinks showed them they’re just like everyone else. Only a bit more fucked up in the thinking compartment.”

 

The cell door clanked shut, a sound that to most patients of Gallagher noted the start of long hours spent with only their own demons to keep them company. Jay waited until the rattling of keys in the lock had stopped before he rose from the floor and walked to the bed. He rubbed his wrists and licked at the bruised skin where Brian’s shove had scratched it open. Had the guard seen the injury? 

 

Jay let his eyes slide shut and concentrated, listening to his own heartbeat. It was easier to enter and manipulate the body of a complete stranger than his own, as extensive tries had shown him. Perhaps it was a bit of hesitation on his part – he knew what he could do. He knew what damage he was capable of inflicting once he latched onto someone’s heartbeat, someone’s rhythm, as he called it now. The bleeding bruise on his arm appeared as a patch of heat before his inner eyes, blood red at the edges, white hot in the centre. 

 

During his childhood, he had not thought about it when he did it. Bruised knees, sprained ankles, torn skin – things a child was subject to every day together with other children in play. Jay had had no name for the gift he possessed until pushing became shoving; he knew wounds would heal, skin would knit itself back together, and tears would dry. He had seen Jenny cry often enough to know wounds should hurt. His stepsister, as Jay, as all children of Enniskillen, had been used to playing outside more than staying inside; not a single day had gone by when one of them did not end up with a bruise somewhere. It was common happenstance and nothing their parents worried about.

 

Jenny had been subject to common childhood ails as well, something that was also normal. Measles, colds, fevers – the winters in Enniskillen were harsh and the summers short. She had once lain sick with a lung infection after her and three other children had broken through the ice on the banks of the River Erne.

 

Or had that been him? It did not matter. 

 

Jay’s bruises had healed within the day he had acquired them and he had never had a single childhood sickness in all his life. His parents had been proud of him and proud of their success in raising such a resilient child; medicine was expensive up there in the North, and a sick child was an inconvenience. He cried over a bleeding knee, but once he realized it was more the shock and the sight of his own dear blood running from a tear in his skin than pain, he stopped. Once, and Jay would rather have drowned himself in the Erne than told anyone about it, he took one of his father’s razors and made a shallow cut on his forearm. Then another. And another. And none of them hurt, and all of them stopped bleeding as Jay realized with terror what he was doing, and that he would receive the spanking of his life if he got caught. 

 

Or had it been just one cut?

 

Now, here, Jay opened his eyes again and inspected the skin. The bruise was gone and all that remained was a patch of skin slightly hot to the touch. He trailed his fingers over it and leaned back until he could rest his head against the wall behind him. 

 

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. And if you’re smart, kill your enemies and make no friends. 

 

\---

 

Time had no meaning inside Gallagher. Days stretched and merged until everything became a blur, an endless repetition of happenings one slowly but surely became familiar with. Jay, one of twelve maximum security patients, had two hours per day to himself when he could walk outside. ‘Outside’ meant a walled-in, 50 by 50 metres large concrete square with electrified barbed wire on top of the walls and two guards sitting behind bullet-proof windows keeping an eye on him when they felt like it. There was nowhere he could run; the walls were smooth, the ground even, and the guards had an array of alarm buttons at their disposal if they so much as thought their patient attempted a breakout or did not follow an order. After three days, Jay knew they drank their coffee from little Styrofoam cups and used artificial sweeteners. Their names were Ernest and Mallory, although Mallory could easily have passed as a man with her towering 6’2 and short dark hair. Jay called them Ernie and Bert, but never to their faces. 

 

\---

 

“Why did you kill all those people, Jay?” Doctor Franklin asked him one bright afternoon after yet another unproductive ‘session’. There was a wild look in her eyes, bordering on the edge of desperation. After Brian-last-name-still-unknown had told him Doctor Franklin was writing a case study about him, Jay had set out to make her life with him as uncomfortable and annoying as possible. 

 

He looked at her over a small pyramid of coloured blocks. She had pushed them through the slot in the glass between them as soon as he sat down and told him to play with them. He had built a tower, a house, and was now adding the top block to the pyramid as her question disturbed the silence. The blocks were smooth-edged and red and had a good weight in his hands when he lifted them; in the corner of his side of the treatment room, Brian leaned against the wall and regarded the entire procedure with slightly raised eyebrows. 

 

Jay added the top block and gently pushed it in place with the tip of a finger. “Because I can.”

 

“No one kills just because they can!”

 

“I do.”

 

“You’re fifteen years old, Jay. Where do you come from? Who taught you?”

 

She had been asking a lot of these questions lately. He wondered if she was slowly coming to the end of her PhD’ed wisdom; Doctor Franklin had been ordering more and more sessions lately, sometimes two a day. Or was she on to something? 

 

“No one taught me. I learned it by myself.”

 

“Why do you kill, Jay?”

 

\---

 

Why, indeed, did he kill? Not for the first time he pondered the question as he hobbled back to his cell with Brian’s shadow looming over him. Security precautions had been worked up a notch after they had found Ernie and Bert’s lifeless bodies slumped in stale pools of coffee five days ago, with Jay sitting in the centre of the concrete square, legs crossed beneath him, fingers laced in his lap. 

 

From his point of view, there were three reasons why people killed, and all three applied to him: boredom, survival, and training. 

 

Boredom was pretty much self-explanatory, as was training. Survival was something he had learned during the years on the streets, in different towns, running with different crowds, the latter gradually becoming more and more dangerous the older he became until he one day decided he was ready to survive on his own. Though he would never admit it to anyone, Jay was scared sometimes. Scared They would come back, the men and women in anonymous clothing, scared They would come back with foul-smelling drugs and promise him it would not hurt.

 

It would not hurt, but that was not the point. His mother had warned him of these people, and although Jay held little more than contempt and a slowly seething anger for the woman who had given life to him, he had nevertheless taken her advice to heart. They would come for him and take him to a place where They would tear into him and look for what was inside, what made him what he was. Jay’s mother, Ruth, had called it a Gift – one of the few things she had told him Jay’s real father had told her before the man vanished from the face of the earth in a roaring fire. 

 

Memory played games with him sometimes, and he would wake in the night from a dream so vividly real he had to scratch his skin open against the wall to remind himself where he was. Dreams of his stepfather, a tall, strong man with weathered skin and callused hands, turning from the table and smiling down at young Jay. Eyes as dark as old bark and hair a shade of brown close to chocolate. Had he taken their eyes out because of that? Had some sort of warped precognition told him he would dream of their eyes years later, here in this little cell at Gallagher? His memory of those early days was hazy at best; perhaps he had not taken their eyes out, after all.

 

“All right, boy, the usual.”

 

He dropped to his knees and lay down and waited for the cuffs to be taken off.

 

\---

 

One night he dreamed of Ballyvaughan and the street behind Old Marty’s store. In the dream, he was not a young boy anymore, but an adolescent on the brink of his sixteenth birthday, and baby fat had long since given way to sinew and sleek muscle. He was still dressed in the rough cotton attire of the institute, but he knew it was only a dream because his mother Ruth stood next to him in the street, her back bowed, her palms held out for him to see the deep gashes he had made with a kitchen knife a decade ago. They were still bleeding. 

 

“Listen to me Jay. You are my son, and I lied to you.”

 

He raised an eyebrow and turned away from her to look at his surroundings. What came now, he had heard it a million times over; the words had burned themselves into his brain years ago. There were the old crumbling walls around him, the dumpster, the overflowing trash cans, the rubbish on the ground. There was the door leading into the back of Old Marty’s store. Jay glanced at his mother and frowned – her words were so loud, they muted the other sounds around them. 

 

“Your father was a stranger, and I don’t know what came over me. I was so young! Oh, please let the Lord have mercy on my soul and mercy on yours, but I must tell you the truth now.”

 

He heard the plink of a small piece of stone and looked to the side, then up. The man and the woman, he remembered them all too well; crouched on the wall like a predator with two heads and bodies but a single mind, looking down at the spot where years ago, a sniffling, scared boy had crawled into the shadow of the dumpster with a piece of brick pressed to his chest, and now they were moving, the man first…

 

“He told me I would bear a child from our encounter and I didn’t believe him. But then my monthly blood didn’t come anymore and I knew what great sin I had heaped upon me and you!”

 

“Would you…shut up?” Jay pressed out between grit teeth, turning to face the man as he jumped down from the wall. Now that Jay was older and taller, the stranger did not quite acquire the monstrous proportions he had had back then. He was just a man with a nondescript face in nondescript clothing. “I’m trying to concentrate here.”

 

“He said you would be special! He said you would have powers beyond my comprehension! Oh Lord, I was so scared when he told me!”

 

“SHUT UP!” 

 

The man moved forward, strangely empty eyes fixed on Jay. “This won’t hurt, I swear…”

 

Like he had back then, Jay screamed. His voice broke on the higher notes of the scream, turning it into a screech that echoed off the crumbling walls. The scream drowned out the voice of his mother, the voice of the man, the voice of the woman on top of the wall. He noticed they were all staring at him, their eyes wide and terrified, their mouths open. Jay felt a wave of pure anguish rush through him and decided this was where it had to end, this was where the dream had to fall apart, and this was where he had to wake up.

 

He did not.

 

“Jay!” three voices rose in unison, two female and one male, their sounds blending together until it sounded like a single being shouting his name in a voice so loud it threatened to bust his eardrums. Jay slapped his hands over his ears and screamed back at them, and reached out blindly with everything he had, and the result was nothing if not spectacular. 

 

As if turned inside out from the mouth onward, his mother, the man and the woman on top of the wall transmuted into beings made of flesh and blood. There was a sound of teeth sinking into a ripe apple, the crack of bones, the liquid splash of blood against the floor; and Jay was looking at them, insides out, at their glistening veins and ropy guts, and he wanted them all to just die, die DIE and leave him alone because he had killed them years ago, no wait, only two of them, but that was just as well.

 

He woke to the rattling of keys in the lock and tumbled out of bed in an ungraceful sprawl. Heard the crack of bone when his arm twisted in ways it was not supposed to twist, the dull pressure just above his hand telling him he had broken his wrist. 

 

Brian stood in the open cell door, eyes wide, and slowly lifted a hand to his mouth. “Oh sweet Jesus…”

 

Jay, heaving still with the vivid images of the dream, stared at the guard and then followed Brian’s gaze down to his right arm. There was a small puddle of blood on the ground because the broken bone had pierced the skin. 

 

\---

 

“Let me ask you again: you are sure you don’t want to be sedated for this?”

 

Sitting in a large chair, his ankles cuffed together and his left wrist cuffed to the table next to him, Jay frowned at the bone and shook his head. Across him, Doctor Raymond, an elderly man who had seen too many summers and winters and patients inside the institute, looked at Doctor Franklin, who stood behind Jay and rested her hand on his shoulder. 

 

Jay did not tell, but that hand on his shoulder was far more annoying than the broken wrist. 

 

Doctor Raymond waited until his colleague had lightly shrugged a shoulder and prepared an injection nevertheless. Jay watched him put it onto a small silver tray that also held a scalpel and something that looked like a screwdriver. 

 

“Just in case you change your mind, young man, because this is going to hurt like hell. I normally don’t ask a patient, I just put them out.”

 

Jay sensed motion to his right and turned his head to see Brian step closer, a look of concern plastered over his broad face. The guard looked as though he was going to throw up any moment, but he bravely took hold of Jay’s arm just below the elbow and pressed it down onto the table with as much force as he dared administer. 

 

“Tell me about your mother, Jay.” Doctor Franklin squeezed his shoulder as Doctor Raymond gripped Jay’s hand and pulled. “What was she like?”

 

Jay watched with fascination as Doctor Raymond pulled his broken bones into alignment and paid close to no attention to the woman hovering behind him. “She was a cunt, just like you.”

 

A moment of breathless silence: Doctor Raymond, ready to grab the injection and knock Jay out for the next three hours, Brian, staring at the open wound, sweat rolling down his face, and Doctor Franklin behind Jay, taking a sharp breath he could only hear. He knew what her face would look like. Round ‘o’ for her mouth, eyes wide, hurt mirrored in them. He yanked his shoulder forward and brought his face very close to Doctor Raymond’s, nearly knocking his head together with Brian’s.

 

“Go on, you quack. It doesn’t hurt.”

 

Doctor Raymond regarded him coolly for a long moment, his large hand still gripping Jay’s. “Doctor Franklin, I think it would be a good idea if you waited outside.”

 

Jay realized he might have made a mistake.

 

Oh well.

 

\---

 

“Man, you are one cold fish, you know that?”

 

Mark Sprigane, age 17, regarded him with open curiosity. The other three male occupants of the TV room seemed a little uneasy with Jay around, but he paid them no mind. His broken wrist in a sling, he sat in an old armchair, legs crossed beneath him. 

 

It was the first time ever since he had been brought to Gallagher six months ago that Jay was allowed to spend time in one of the TV rooms accessible to the other maximum security patients of the institution. Doctor Franklin herself, out of who knew what reasons, had asked for him to have that privilege. After his little outbreak in the hospital room, and despite what he had hoped said outbreak would achieve, the woman had spent more and more time with him – obsessed, almost, and Jay wondered at times if not maybe some of the insanity she was surrounded with day by day was slowly beginning to rub off on her.

 

So here he sat now, watching a documentation on sea gulls together with Mark Sprigane, Tommy Tyson, Jason Bell and little James Martin. Through the glass wall parting the TV room from the corridor outside, Jay could see Brian’s shadow against the far wall. 

 

“Are you even listening to me?” Mark Sprigane was tall and wiry and Jay had heard he hung pictures of naked women on the walls of his cell. He had a fox face, sharp and pointy, but his head was shaped like an egg. Brian had told him Mark had been beaten by his father on a daily schedule, and one day Mark’s old man had been carried away a little too far and cracked his son’s skull with a tyre iron. “Is it true what they say about you?”

 

“What do they say about me?”

 

The day he got out of the hospital, Mark went into a sport’s shop and bought a baseball club with money he had stolen from a patient. He went home and cracked the baseball club down on the back of his sleeping father’s head before he tied him down and used a clothing iron to singe most of his father’s face away. 

 

“They say you killed 50 people!” Mark’s voice diminished to an almost awed whisper on the last two words. “And Doctor Franklin likes you so much, she’s been trying to get your status reduced to medium security so you can spend some more time with the rest of us.”

 

That was news to him, and unwelcome news at that. Jay moved his fingers, trying to alleviate the itch that had been plaguing him for two days now. His wrist had long since healed, but since his slip-up with Doctor Raymond and the calculating glance the man had given him after the operation, Jay was not willing to draw any more attention to himself in that regard. And now this blasted woman was trying to get him to mingle with the rest of them?

 

“So what’s so special about you?” That was little James Martin. Jay regarded him with hooded eyes. The boy was younger than Jay, thirteen or fourteen, but he had been a patient at Gallagher’s longer than him. Brian had said: “Stuck a knife up his baby brother’s ass, he did. What’s with kids these days? Every year it gets worse.”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“You just won’t tell. They’ve been treating you all special, but you’re not special, you’re just fucked in the head like the rest of us,” Tommy Tyson piped up. 

 

‘Piped’ was a good word to describe this boy’s voice, Jay thought. Half of Tommy’s face was a mass of scars and knotted skin, result of a failed attempt to set himself and his dog on fire after not getting enough attention from his parents. Quoth Brian: “He’s the worst of them. Silent and well-behaved until he gets into one of his tantrums. Then he’s worse than a crackwhore on a bad trip. Don’t let yourself get into an argument with him, okay?”

 

Tommy Tyson had no lips worth speaking of and a small amount of drool was constantly dripping down his chin. Jay did not know if he should be appalled or fascinated by Tommy’s obvious will to keep going and live a life that meant ten more years at Gallagher before he was let out of here with a face looking like a charred grapefruit. 

 

“So is it true? Did you kill 50 people?” Mark leaned forward and stared at Jay from close-up. He could smell dinner on Mark’s breath and moved back to escape the smell. It did not escape him how Mark’s slanted eyes narrowed at the movement. “What’s up with you? Don’t like to have one of us up and close to you?”

 

“Maybe he’s a-scared!” came Tommy’s high voice, laced with cackling laughter. “Is little Jay a scaredy-cat?” 

 

Jay turned his head to stare at the other boy and recognized the rules of the game. He felt Mark’s fist wind into the front of his shirt and was yanked forward a moment later; only a quick move of his foot prevented him from crashing to the floor with Mark on top of him. Twisting around, the thin material of his shirt tore in Mark’s fist, but Jay managed to get to the other side of the room just as Mark, unbalanced by the unexpected move, fell to the floor with a grunt. 

 

And then Tommy, James and Mark moved toward him like a pack of hungry cats circling around a wounded mouse. Jay cast a glance toward the door and saw Brian’s shadow, still dancing, and next to him, Doctor Franklin, looking into the room. His eyes caught hers, and he understood.

 

“Fuck you too, cunt,” Jay pressed out between thin lips.

 

\---

 

“So what started this?”

 

Doctor Ellison, tall and good-looking in his needled suit and polished shoes, paced along the window of the hospital room but kept his eyes on Jay while he moved. Ellison was the ‘dean’ of Gallagher, a point he pressed whenever the chance presented itself. Well into his late fifties, he even looked like a dean, or like what Jay imagined a dean would look like. He spoke with a calm, soothing voice and tried to build trust between him and his patients. Jay had disliked him upon first sight.

 

“I don’t know.” 

 

Next to the window, Doctor Franklin leaned against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. She regarded Jay with cold calculation, and he could not get rid of the feeling that she wanted him to blame the others, wanted him to start raving and screaming.

 

“Sir, can’t this wait?” That was Doctor Raymond, dabbing at Jay’s face with cotton balls. “He’s got a broken nose and that eye needs looking after. He’s hardly in any condition to be answering questions now.”

 

Ellison sighed and run a hand through salt-and-pepper hair. “I’d just like to know how he managed to break Sprigane’s and Tyson’s necks. Is that too much to ask?” Ellison’s voice never rose above a certain level, Jay realized. The trick to judge this man’s mood was to listen to the inflection behind the words and the weight he assigned to syllables. “And how come no one saw or heard anything until it was too late? We had a guard outside, we had a _doctor_ outside, and no one noticed anything? How are we going to explain this? Bad luck?”

 

Jay could not see Brian, who stood near the door, but he could literally feel the big man’s unease as he tried to come up with an answer to the questions. Jay closed his eye, the right eye, because the other was swollen shut and leaking something, and locked the voices out. 

 

Tommy had bitten him in the face.

 

Tommy had bitten him in the eye.

 

\---

 

“I’m sorry, Jay,” Brian said as he rolled him through the long corridor toward his cell. “Doctor Franklin, she distracted me. Told me about her kids and husband and how they were going to go on a holiday to America this year.”

 

Jay did not answer. He sat in the wheelchair and stared at his knees. His vision was distorted, and it caused him discomfort. Everything seemed flatter than before, out of proportion somehow. Would it stay like this?

 

“When I realized what was going on, I was too late. Christ, that woman, I’d swear she’s done this on purpose if I didn’t know better.”

 

Jay did not answer. He stared past his knees at the floor and noticed how things seemed to swim all of a sudden. 

 

“Jay? Does it hurt a lot? I could ask Doctor Raymond for some more painkillers if you’d like.”

 

He realized he was crying and analyzed the feeling accompanying the tears with detachment. Was he crying because they had injured him? No. Was he crying because Doctor Franklin had more or less betrayed him? No. Was he crying because Doctor Raymond had told him he would probably never see out of his left eye again? No. 

 

He was crying because he was so angry he felt he would burst any moment now. He felt like a little boy again, pushed into a corner and hunted, with no one around him he could trust. Taking a hitched breath through gritted teeth, Jay suppressed a loud sob threatening to escape and pushed.

 

Brian’s body fell against the back of the wheelchair and forced it onward down the corridor in a straight line. Through his tears, Jay saw the far wall approach and leaned his head back. His knees impacted with the concrete with a dull thud that effectively brought the wheelchair to a halt. 

 

The last he remembered before the world fell into a black hole was Jason Bell’s terrified face as he bent over frozen, scared Mark Sprigane’s body and took his head in both hands to snap his neck. 

 

\---

 

Doctor Franklin did not come to see him anymore, nor did any other doctor of the Gallagher Hospital for Juvenile Delinquents and Mentally Unstable Teenagers. His status was moved from maximum to triple maximum two days after another guard had found Jay unconscious in the wheelchair and Brian’s cooling body lying facedown in the corridor. There were no more coloured blocks, no more questions about his past or his mother or why he killed.

 

The best place to hide is still in the eye of the storm. 

 

\---

 

Rattling keys in the lock announced a visitor. This was a special door, Jay knew. Instead of the customary single lock, this door had two, and on the outside there was even a sliding bar for added security. Inside, there was only a bed, mounted to the floor just like in his old cell. He had not been outside for two weeks, and the guards assigned to watch him during the few times he was allowed to visit the library did not speak much to him. His meals were pushed through a slot at the bottom of the door, and he had strict instructions to put everything back half an hour later or two guards would come inside and make him return everything. 

 

The man – man? Young man – who stepped through the door as soon as it was open, wore a crisp light suit and tan shoes. He had black hair and wore glasses. 

 

He looked like one of them.

 

“What happened to his face?” Cold, articulated voice, smooth. Jay could not put down the accent to anything he had heard before. 

 

From his vantage point on his bed, his back pressing against the wall as his muscles started to tense the closer the man came to him, Jay could see Doctor Ellison hover just outside the door. The doctor was nervous, Jay could tell. He could smell acrid sweat from somewhere and shifted his foot to a position where he could bury it in the stranger’s stomach if he came too close.

 

“He was in a fight. An unfortunate accident. Another patient attacked him and…well, bit him. We could not save the eye.”

 

Surprisingly, the stranger seemed angry, and that confused Jay. What was going on here? He felt like a trapped animal and bared his teeth at the stranger as he advanced further, a technique that worked on most of the guards. 

 

And indeed, the stranger did stop moving toward him and regarded him coolly. “Get up.”

 

“Fuck you. I’m not going anywhere.”

 

A raised eyebrow. “You don’t want to leave this place?”

 

“No.”

 

“I’m afraid you don’t have much of a choice in that matter.” With a small sigh, the stranger closed the distance between them and bent low. His voice, when he continued, was a whisper. “I know what you can do, Jay. This is your only chance to get out of this place and do something with your life instead of rotting away here until you die of old age.”

 

Kill him? Yes? No? He noticed the other was staring at his ruined eye and felt a wave of anger overcome him. The other man seemed to sense it and took a step back, adjusting his suit. 

 

“You’ll either walk out of here, or I’ll carry you out of here. Your choice.”

 

He considered his options. The best place to hide had become the place where they caught up with him. And this one was one of them, Jay knew. What did ‘out of here’ include? A bullet to the head as soon as he stepped outside the door? Another institution?

 

Or things his mother had warned him about?

 

He rolled off the bed and brought more space between himself and the stranger. So far, the man had not made any threatening moves toward him, and Jay knew he could take him out very quickly if that happened. Cautiously, he moved toward the open door, staring at Doctor Ellison and the two guards outside. Something about them seemed off. Ellison was almost slack faced. 

 

“Keep going.”

 

Jay stopped in the hallway outside his cell and turned around to see the stranger pass by Ellison and the guards as though they did not exist. He looked down the hallway and threw a glance at Jay he could not interpret. Run and I’ll shoot you? 

 

“Doctor Crawford…are you sure you - ”

 

The man called Crawford turned to Doctor Ellison and silenced him with a gesture. “I am sure. I’m taking him with me.”

 

To certain death, into the hands of an organization Jay knew from his mother collected people like him. People who could do things others could not. Jay wondered what would happen if he simply walked back into his cell and refused to go anywhere. Would Crawford carry him? 

 

“Jay, we’re leaving.” Crawford stepped closer to him and nodded toward the door at the other end of the corridor. “Is there anything you would like to take with you?”

 

“No.”

 

“Good.” Crawford nodded again and began to walk. He turned as Jay did not follow him. “Well, come on?”

 

Jay did not budge. “Who the fuck are you?”

 

“I’m Crawford. Brad Crawford. You’re being relocated to another institution.”

 

“Really.”

 

Crawford’s face broke into a sardonic grin. “Oh yeah. I’m sure you’ll like it. You’ll get to do things there you’ve always wanted to do.”

 

Jay cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow. “What things?”

 

Crawford walked back to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, and Jay decided not to kill him until he had heard what the man was going to say.

 

And Crawford said, “You get to kill people again.”

 

\---

 

The hallways were deserted, the halls ominously silent. Jay left it to gods beyond his understanding to decide if that was a good omen or not. He had never paid a lot of attention to the people surrounding him during his time in Gallagher, but now as he walked down a long hallway toward a destiny still unknown, Crawford in step with him, the entire institute seemed to hold its breath as it watched Jay go. Undoubtedly, those who knew he was leaving were glad to see him go. 

 

Crawford did not speak to him while they moved swiftly toward the exit. The man was nearly an entire head taller than Jay and carried his weight with the grace of someone used to fights. Broad shoulders and narrow hips; most of Crawford’s strength seemed to reside in his upper body, an observation that made Jay wonder if the man was a boxer. Self-conscious in his rough and grimy attire next to clean-scrubbed Crawford in his expensive suit and leather shoes, Jay noticed Crawford seemed different, after all, from the men and women who had hunted him before Gallagher swallowed him up only to spit him into Crawford’s palm now. There was something cold beneath his smooth face, carefully hidden yet apparent nonetheless. Jay, tense still and ready to bolt at a moment’s notice, latched onto Crawford’s rhythm and listened to his even, steady, almost too steady heartbeat. Crawford seemed not in the least concerned about whom he was walking next to. Was that a good sign?

 

Or did Crawford have something, hold something, to subdue Jay in a second? 

 

And when had he started doubting his own abilities? With a small sigh, Jay reminded himself that his own Gift was not something to trifle with. He was strong. He had something to defend himself with; there was no need to worry for now. Crawford’s rhythm rolled out of control for a breath as Jay pushed a little; out of the corner of his eye, he saw him flinch and blink, and to Jay it was confirmation enough that yes, he held power over this one as well. At the bottom of their existence, even the men and women who hunted him were mortal and needed a beating heart. 

 

He severed the tie to Crawford and looked ahead. They were quickly nearing the main exit of the institute, double-winged doors controlled by guards sitting in the ‘Black Box’, a protruding compartment protected by metal and stone to the left of the doors. The single window cut into the Black Box was tinted a dark grey, leaving visitors and patients in doubt over anyone’s presence inside. But there was someone inside, for as soon as Crawford and Jay came within reach of the security cameras installed above the door, it swung open, allowing Jay his first look at the world outside in six months.

 

If he had expected a moment of excitement as he left Gallagher and stepped into the cool, crisp September air, Jay was disappointed. The bleak sky cast an unfavourable light on the concrete stretch serving as Gallagher’s forecourt and the high fence surrounding the entire area. A few solitary rose bushes, devoid of leaf and bloom at this time of year, unsuccessfully tried to break up the grey-in-grey charm of the forecourt and the adjoining building. Beyond the fence, fields dominated the view, their dark soil almost black on the edge of the horizon. 

 

The air smelled faintly of salt, and Jay remembered what he had thought when they rolled him into the institute: somewhere close to the sea. But there was no stretch of blue anywhere on the horizon; only dark soil reaching for grey sky.

 

It was bitterly cold.

 

“Hey, wait for me!”

 

The mechanic sound of the door opening behind them paired with the voice made Jay and Crawford turn around to see a lanky figure clad in a much too large army coat bound down the stairs toward them. The young man’s breath left white plumes in the cold air; on closer inspection, Jay caught a glance of hooded green eyes and a few strands of reddish hair peeking out from under the woollen cap rounding up the ensemble of winter clothing he was wearing. 

 

The stranger came to a halt next to Crawford and pushed a stack of folders into his hands. “That’s all I could find. The good doctor wasn’t too cooperative, so I had to use a little more force than necessary.”

 

Like Crawford, the stranger had an accent hard to put down. Jay remained where he was and just watched him, feeling the cold air begin to bite into his skin with vicious little teeth. The green eyes slid over his face once before they darted away again in a show of blatant obliviousness. 

 

“Is he still alive?” Crawford’s voice had taken on a note of endurance. He thumbed through the folders and then held them out to Jay without looking at him. “Here, I think those are yours.”

 

His personal files. Jay glanced at the name written on the first of the folders and raised an eyebrow; someone had put his name down as ‘Jay O’Siodhain’ before another person had crossed the wrong spelling through and written the correct spelling next to it. He knew it was Doctor Franklin’s handwriting. 

 

“Somewhat.” 

 

Jay noted the long pause in conversation and glanced up from the folders to find Crawford and the stranger staring at him. Feeling subjected to two directed stares too many, he pressed the folders against his chest and glowered back at them. 

 

It started in the right side of his head and gradually moved to a spot behind his brow. Unlike anything he had ever felt before, Jay endured the alien feeling before a part of his Gift he had never used before reacted and slammed against what felt like gentle fingers stroking the nodes and curls of his brain. Surprised that his power acted on its own all of a sudden, he could only stare as the stranger next to Crawford took a hasty step back as though someone had taken a swipe at him. Green eyes blinked in disorientation before they honed in on Jay’s face, the mouth set beneath those eyes a grim, thin line, lips void of blood and nearly white.

 

_Idiot! Fool! Don’t show them!_

 

Jay looked away from the other man’s eyes and stared hard at the ground until he heard Crawford say something in a language he did not understand. The sound of footsteps, receding – he glanced up to find the stranger staring at him still, Crawford disappearing around the corner of the building, walking past a sign marked ‘Parking Lot 1’. 

 

“My name is Schuldig,” the stranger said in a too calm voice, his eyes burning holes into Jay’s face. He seemed to have recovered quickly from whatever Jay had done to him – or rather, from whatever Jay’s Gift had done to him, for something _had_ happened just now, something that set an invisible boundary between them. “I don’t know what you just did, but don’t do it again unless you want me to hurt you – oh wait, that doesn’t work with you, does it? Well, I’ll think of something else then.”

 

The cold air seemed not cold enough anymore to keep his face from burning as though he had been caught with his fingers in the cookie pot; Jay ground his teeth together and gripped the folders pressed against his chest even tighter. 

 

“What else do you know about me?”

 

Schuldig lifted his eyebrows, making them disappear beneath the rim of his woollen cap and giving his face a peculiar expression. He took a step closer to Jay, hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat, and gave him a long look as if trying to judge him.

 

“Enough. I – that means we, by the way – know you don’t feel pain. Good enough for us.” Schuldig’s tone of voice turned haughty. “We got the brains covered, now we need some muscles. That’s where you come in.”

 

Jay decided to kill Schuldig first, should it come to that.

 

\---

 

The Gallagher Hospital for Juvenile Delinquents and Mentally Unstable Teenagers, Jay learned, was located in an empty plain in the North Downs fifty miles south of Canterbury. Perhaps not entirely empty, but the few farmhouses and small villages they passed on their way to Newhaven were hardly worth speaking of. He sat in the back of the car and looked out of the rear window until the grey walls of the institute vanished out of sight; only then did he turn around and looked forward.

 

Through the windshield of the car, he could see the street, a concrete band stretching out before them, disappearing on the horizon. Crawford drove, occasionally slipping glances in the rear-view mirror, holding Jay’s eye long enough to let him know those glances were on purpose. Conversation had been scarce and mostly between Crawford and Schuldig since the black Mercedes Benz had passed the guarded gates of Gallagher. When they spoke, it was in a language Jay thought sounded a lot like he imagined Chinese or Japanese would sound like. 

 

Next to him, the fourth occupant of the car sat as still as a statue. His name was Nagi. Jay had stared at him out of the corner of his eye until Nagi had started staring back; neither of them had said a word until Crawford said something in that foreign language and Nagi turned his head away. This one had to be a child still unless Jay was totally mistaken. At least four years younger than him, Nagi was nothing but a waif with too large eyes and a mob of dark hair; his slanted eyes were large despite their obvious Asian heritage, and at first Jay had thought they were black until a break in the cloudy sky revealed them to be nearly black blue.

 

He turned slightly in his seat and stared out of the window. The landscape was passing so quickly it turned into a blur of bleak colours and nothing more. Since he had lost his eye, Jay had been subject to what counted as headaches for him: pressure behind the temples, distorted sight if he concentrated on something too long. He knew there was probably a way around these ails, and that with enough time and training his body would accept the disadvantages a missing eye brought along; for now though, he was sitting in a car for the first time in months, and the landscape was racing by, and he could feel the pressure building behind his temples, accompanied by a dull thudding in the empty eye socket. 

 

He forgot about the world around him and reached up with both hands to cradle his head, left hand index finger sliding over the slightly heated skin above his left orbital bone. After the fight that cost two inmates their lives, Doctor Raymond had taken one look at the swollen, bleeding ruin of his face and decided this was beyond him. A specialist had been called in that afternoon; the man had come from an eye clinic in Canterbury and told Jay in a soothing voice that the eye had to be removed. Tommy’s teeth had hooked into the soft orb and gone upward until they hit the upper bow of the socket. There was nothing left to save.

 

Although the specialist had carefully sewn the upper and lower eyelid together to avoid dust or dirt from infecting the raw flesh inside, the hollow place behind the closed lids sometimes seeped a pinkish liquid. Jay did not know enough about the working of his body to know where this liquid came from; when it came, it came in the company of a headache and a feeling of fever notching his body temperature up a bit. It was not the lost eye that drove him to nearly bang his head against the wall sometimes – it was the phantom feeling of the eye still being there, still moving around in its cradle of flesh and bone. 

 

“What’s wrong with you?”

 

Jay opened his remaining eye a bit and stared through his fingers. Schuldig had turned around in the passenger seat and hooked an arm around the headrest. He had taken his woollen cap off sometime during the last few minutes, and his red hair – which was not really red, more of a red shot through with orange – tumbled around his shoulders in disarray. It did nothing to soften the ever-apparent sneer hanging in the corners of his mouth.

 

“I have a headache,” Jay said softly.

 

“A headache?” Schuldig’s laughter was gentle and mocking. “I thought you didn’t feel pain? God, Crawford, did you hear that? Our poor baby has a head - ”

 

‘Ache’ was lost in a painful howl as Jay lifted his legs, leaned back, and rammed his feet against the back of the seat Schuldig sat in. He had used enough force to unhook the seat adjusting mechanism, and with a loud crack Schuldig was propelled forward into the dashboard. Then Jay had to grip the edge of his own seat hard, because Crawford floored the brake and the car came to a skidding halt with a loud screeching of tyres. 

 

To his left, Nagi shouted something Jay did not understand. He snapped his left arm out, the side of his hand catching the child in the stomach and making Nagi double over with a loud gasp. Keeping his feet on the back of the seat to keep it pushed forward and thus Schuldig squeezed in between dashboard and seat, Jay turned his head just in time to see Crawford snap open the seatbelt and turn around. He lifted his left foot and lashed out at Crawford’s face, catching him squarely. Crawford was forced against the steering wheel, and the resulting loud honk of the horn marked the turning point of Jay’s one-man-war against the other occupants of the car.

 

At one point during the chaos that broke lose, Jay had the distinct impression Nagi was trying to do something to him with his hands. The child looked rather dumbfounded, and Jay knew his own facial expression had to be close to that, as he knocked the hands turned toward him palm first to the side and slammed Nagi’s head against the window behind him. With a look of bewilderment mixed with pain, Nagi crumbled in the seat, dazed.

 

“Don’t you dare kill him!” 

 

Still in the driver’s seat, though now leaning into the back of the car with his hands wrapped around one of Farfarello’s legs, Crawford’s stare was wild and filled with deep, cold anger. 

 

“Schuldig! Take him out already, god damn it!”

 

“I’m trying!” Schuldig’s face was a mess of blood and hair plastered to his cheeks. “I can’t get a hold of him!”

 

 _No, you can’t_ , Jay thought grimly. _Does that wipe that grin off your face, asshole?_

 

He pushed himself back into his own seat with his knee against Schuldig’s seat and took a deep breath. This was the possible scenario he had had in mind when he followed Schuldig to the car: that he might have to kill them all and then be stuck on a road in the middle of nowhere until someone came along and had mercy on a juvenile killer in loony bin clothing. 

 

Killing Crawford and Schuldig would only take a moment. He could snap Nagi’s neck at leisure once the other two were dead. 

 

“Man, I _wish_ we’d be delivering him to Eszet instead! Crazy bastard!”

 

“Schuldig, shut up!”

 

For a moment, Jay forgot to breathe, Schuldig’s words ringing in his ears. He ignored Crawford’s hands yanking on his leg and nearly forcing him off the seat and stared at Schuldig’s bloody face, being met with a glare of genuine anger and none of the haughty amusement Schuldig had displayed toward him so far. 

 

They were _not_ delivering him to Eszet? 

 

Crawford lunged forward, and Jay’s arm came up too late to block the incoming strike. His hold on Crawford’s rhythm slipped; he struggled to latch onto the now wildly beating heart again, but the side of Crawford’s fist solidly connected with his throat and knocked him back. Then pressure and a feeling of ice through his veins – Jay snarled and kicked out, but the world quickly descended into sluggish drowsiness. Motion at his side made him realize Nagi’s hand was pressed against the soft spot directly beneath his Adam’s apple. He felt the short needle leave the base of his throat as Crawford pulled his hands back from his leg, and saw Schuldig lean forward between the seats as well, the young man’s face set in a full frown, and Schuldig’s hands reached for his head.

 

**+++++**

**Greater London Area**

**Heathrow Airport**

**September 4** **th** **, 1992**

**+++++**

 

“Damn it Crawford, how much of that stuff are you giving him?”

 

He noticed a humming sound around and a vibration beneath him, setting his entire body in motion, and opened his eye to see Crawford lean over him with yet another injection in hand. His first instinct was to raise his hand and ward off the other man, but he found he could not move his hand – or his arms, or any part of his upper body. 

 

“Is that concern I hear in your voice, Schu?” 

 

Crawford’s hand moved his chin up before Jay felt the pressure of a needle and the familiar icy fire through his veins. He let his eye slide shut and swallowed dryly, trying to figure out how to counter the effect of the drug given to him. More feeling than seeing Crawford move away from him, Jay concentrated on listening while his body worked – at least he hoped it did. Were drugs an injury? Could he nullify the effects?

 

Let his Gift decide. 

 

Somewhere to his left, conversation carried on, again in the unfamiliar language now. He caught his own name a couple of times but gave up on trying to putting it into any kind of context after a while. There was a slightly rounded ceiling above him, covered with what seemed to be a crème-coloured cloth. It took him a long while to come to the conclusion that he was inside an airplane, and that the vibrations and the humming sound meant they were above the ground already – or had been above the ground for a long time now? Or maybe they were in the process of getting there… His sense of time and space was nearly nonexistent. There were brief flashes of memory, each one somehow including Crawford looming above him with an injection. More ceilings. The feeling of being carried like a child. 

 

His eye rolled open again. Was his Gift working? His entire body felt weightless, and why could he not move? Restraints, most likely. Jay lifted his head and caught a glimpse of his arms inside white cloth, crossed over his chest. There were some kinds of straps running around his midsection. Motion to his left miraculously resulted in Schuldig looming above him, the longest strands of the young man’s hair tickling his face. Jay felt the collar of whatever he was wearing being pushed down and two fingers rest against his pulse. Control now. He needed time to arrange himself in the order of things before he was ready to deal with anyone. He needed to be left alone for that.

 

“Heartbeat’s steady, but he’s burning. Unless you want to bring him home a drug addict or short a few more brain cells, I’d suggest you sing him to sleep.”

 

“Very funny, Schu.”

 

They had slipped into English again. The collar was tucked back up and Schuldig moved out of his line of sight. 

 

“What triggered it?” The soft voice had to belong to Nagi, Jay thought. The English sounded broken and carefully pronounced. He wondered why they were switching between languages all the time. “He was calm before. Then he attacked. Something must have triggered it.”

 

Thoughtful silence after this and Jay felt his head clear up in a rush that nearly made him gasp and give himself away. It seemed his Gift could, if not entirely clear away, then at least reduce the effects of the drugs Crawford, according to Schuldig’s words, had been injecting him. But the sudden clearing of his thoughts was nearly as bad as the sluggishness of the drugs had been, and he felt worse than before. 

 

_Take it easy. Just keep breathing and let them think you’re still out of it._

 

“Does his profile say anything about any…quirks?” Crawford asked. “I checked the reports very carefully, but maybe they overlooked an important detail.”

 

Rustling of paper, and then Schuldig: “Nope. Unless you count ‘aberrant violent behaviour and antisocial attitude’ as a quirk.”

 

“You said God.” Nagi again. 

 

“I said what?” Crawford.

 

“God. I’m sure of it. You said the word ‘god’ just before he attacked.”

 

Jay could feel three pairs of eyes staring holes into him. 

 

“Oh no,” Schuldig said at last, his voice having a definite whining quality to it.

 

O _h yes_ , Jay thought. _Now that you mention it, oh yes._

 

Then the airplane he knew he was in lifted off the ground, and he had to concentrate on calming down his stomach.

 

**+++++**

**Indian Ocean**

**Somewhere**

**September 5** **th** **, 1992**

**+++++**

 

If it had been funny, he would have laughed. But there was nothing funny about being caught inside a simple jacket with straps, and Jay had to hold onto the last shreds of his patience with everything he had left of said patience. 

 

He gave Schuldig the most vicious glare he could manage and could have screamed in utter frustration as the other simply smiled back at him, one leg dangling over the arm rest of his seat, his chin propped up on that knee. 

 

The first thing he would learn, once steady ground was back under his feet, was how to get out of a straight jacket, and if it was just to be able to wipe that grin of Schuldig’s face. 

 

“Would you like something to eat?” Schuldig offered, still smiling smugly, when Jay stopped trying to move his arms from their forced position. He seemed amused by the sour look his question received and stood, stretching long limbs. “I saw you naked when Crawford dressed you. I could count every rib under your skin. What do they feed you loonies? Air?”

 

Naked. Jay felt his face heat and vowed to himself to pay Crawford back for that, somehow. A glance in Crawford’s reaction showed him the man was watching him and Schuldig calmly, comfortably seated in the back of the plane. There was an expression of mild curiosity on Crawford’s face. 

 

“Well?” Schuldig stepped closer until he hovered just outside of Jay’s reach; experience was still the best teacher, Jay thought, and ever since he had delivered a kick to Schuldig’s stomach a few hours ago when the young man came too close to him, Schuldig kept a somewhat safe berth around him. “Answer my question, oh holy - ”

 

“Schuldig!” Crawford interjected sharply. “Leave him be. He’ll ask once he wants something.”

 

“Yes, bwana. Question is, does he know how to react around, well, normal people? I don’t want to wake up with him howling at the moon for something to eat.”

 

“I’m still in the same plane, you know?” Jay said tersely, gritting his teeth. “If you need to know something, you’re free to ask me anytime.”

 

Schuldig raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “That’s the longest sentence I heard you say since I met you. Wow.”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“No, thank you.” Schuldig smiled. “Well?”

 

“Well what?”

 

“Well, do you want something to eat or not?”

 

“You just don’t give up, do you?”

 

“For a proclaimed psychopath, you’re frighteningly perspective.”

 

It was meant as a joke, but it shut Jay up effectively, reminding him that for now, he wanted to let them think he was not lucid enough to be paid too much attention to. The trick, he thought, would be to strike that fine balance between raving lunatic and sane sociopath. 

 

He looked away from Schuldig and met Nagi’s large eyes, staring at him with a mixture of fascination and fear. 

 

Was there no place on this damned plane where he was _not_ stared at?

 

“I can’t see anything in regards to him,” Crawford said softly as the silence had begun to stretch into the space of ‘uncomfortable’. He sounded contemplative. “Not a single, damn thing.”

 

“Welcome to the club,” Schuldig said cheerily, waving his hands in the air. “I can’t read him.”

 

“And I can’t touch him,” Nagi said, visibly shrinking back into his seat when Jay stared at him long and hard. “Like…like that, I mean.”

 

What were they talking about? Jay felt the brunt of three pairs of eyes once again focused on him and wished they would all just spontaneously combust. But that was a bad idea, at least as long as they were still several thousand feet above the ground on the way to who knew where. He focused on his bare feet to have something to stare at and forced himself to stay calm and think about what they had told him so far and what he had picked from their conversations.

 

They were not going to deliver him into the clutches of Eszet. He would believe it when it came true, but for now he had no other choice but to believe it. 

 

And yet, they seemed to be a team of people working for Eszet. And they had just rescued him, as Schuldig put it, from the clutches of authority. Together with Crawford’s hints about getting to kill again, Jay could only surmise they meant to keep him as some sort of pet on a leash. A pet killer. 

 

How amusing.

 

There was something bitterly ironic about the fact that Jay was expected to heel to a group of people he had spent the better part of his life running away from, who now did not even seem to recognize him. They had not even asked him – not really, at last – if he would agree to it; just waltzed in and taken him by the hand and lead him out of Gallagher, where he had thought himself safe so far. How had they found him? 

 

Of course, perhaps they were just looking for a killer. He would fit that bill just nicely with a few extra surprises to boot; yet he had to wonder about the sheer dumb luck that had made them make this choice. Or was there something they were not telling him? Maybe they knew what he was, after all, and all this talk about not being able to ‘see’ him, ‘read’ him and ‘touch’ him were pretence as much as his explosion at the mention of the word ‘God’ was pretence now. Maybe they were, right now, just trying to lull him in safety, and once they landed wherever they were taking him, men and women with long hands and friendly faces would be coming for him again like they had so many years ago.

 

He looked at them from under his eyelashes and observed the easy way with which they treated each other. Nagi seemed, not only by age, the baby of the group. He was soft-spoken and held himself back every time Schuldig and Crawford bantered or discussed. Jay remembered the look of surprise on Nagi’s face during the fight in the car. The boy had tried to do something to him with his hands – ‘touch’ him. Obviously, it had not worked. 

 

Crawford and Schuldig had an air about them that told him they had known each other for a few years at least. Although Crawford was undoubtedly the leader of this trio, Schuldig did not treat him as such. It seemed strange to Jay that a group of Eszet people, of whom he had been afraid for so long, acted the way Nagi, Schuldig and Crawford did. There was nothing even remotely scary about them.

 

They did not know what he was. Otherwise they would have done a lot more than sedate him for as long as it took him to get him into the plane and stuff him into a simple straight jacket. Now Jay had to make sure they did not found out, and maybe, just maybe, he could turn this situation to his advantage after all.

 

If not, he could always just kill them and run away again. It had worked so far. 

 

\---

 

Night still found them hanging over an infinite stretch of ocean, the engines of the plane lulling Nagi to sleep and Crawford into burying himself behind a stack of newspapers acquired at various airports. Jay spent much of the time in a semi-aware slumber, taking note of the movement around him, awake enough to act on it if something seemed threatening, yet relaxed enough to not arouse their interest any more than necessary. He lay on his back, the straight jacket making any other position simply too uncomfortable to endure for long. 

 

“Still not hungry?”

 

It was said in a whisper and roused him from daydreaming – more or less, since it was night outside – about life on the streets before London had called to him with her many illicit offers and fascinating lights. He let his head fall to the side and found his face on the same level with Schuldig’s. The young man knelt to the side of the adjusted seat, one hand lightly resting on the edge of the upholstery. Jay could smell something – airplane food, most likely – waft up from somewhere next to Schuldig. He looked at him for a long moment, and then turned his head back.

 

“I will not eat like a dog, with my hands bound.” Glancing to the side, he added, “And I will not let you feed me like a baby.”

 

“I’m much too lazy to even consider feeding you,” Schuldig said good-naturedly, chuckling in that nasal way of his. “But it seems we’ve arrived at a problem: how do I know you’re not going to go ballistic once I let you out of that nice jacket?”

 

“You won’t know until you tried it,” Jay answered in much the same tone of voice. He did not expect the other to really let him out of the restrictive garment, much less let him handle possibly sharp silverware, and was prepared to go back to daydreaming as he felt nimble fingers pluck at the straps on his arm. Turning his head again, he raised an eyebrow at Schuldig. “Trusting, are you?”

 

Schuldig shook his head and started really tugging on the straps, muttering under his breath. He suddenly seemed years younger than Jay as he gave a small crow of delight as the first sleeve of the straight jacket loosened enough for Jay to bend his arm.

 

“Not really. I’m counting on you to not be so stupid as to actually try something.” Before he set to work on the other sleeve, Schuldig casually lifted the hem of his turtleneck sweater and showed Jay the flat, black holster of a gun lying snug against his hip. “I can get to that weapon in about two seconds. Think you’re faster than that, you’re welcome to try. Although I’ll probably blow us all to hell if I put a few holes into the plane.”

 

“I’ll still manage to shoot you before I die, Schu.” Crawford’s voice carried from the back of the plane. Jay had to roll onto his side to look at him; Crawford’s head had neither emerged from behind the newspaper, nor had he changed the position Jay had last seen him in. 

 

He rolled onto his back again and batted Schuldig’s hands away, beginning to work on the other side of the straight jacket on his own. This was so surreal. He was tempted to ask for a camera to ban it on film for all eternity. 

 

“What’s so funny?” Schuldig had scooted back and leaned against the arm rest of his own seat opposite Jay’s.

 

“Nothing.”

 

“You’re from Ireland, aren’t you?”

 

Jay looked up sharply, left arm still caught in the sleeve of the straight jacket. “Yes.”

 

“Say something.”

 

“What?”

 

“Can you speak Irish? I want to hear you say something in Irish.”

 

“I don’t want to.”

 

“Why not? You can speak it, come on, say something. I would like to hear it.”

 

“Is cuma lioma sa donas, pé olc maith leat é.” [1]

 

Schuldig drew a face. “You just told me to go fuck myself, didn’t you?”

 

“Yup.” The lie slipped as easily from his lips as his arm from the sleeve, and Jay enjoyed the long stretch he was finally capable of. His muscles seemed stiff from lying still so long. The tips of his ringers touched the roof of the compartment they were in as he stretched to his full length. Though not overly fond of being trapped inside a flying metal toothpaste tube, Jay knew he could make do with what he had. And he had been right about the smell. A small tray of sandwiches and a bowl of hot soup sat on the ground next to his seat. 

 

Schuldig watched him eat and kept his mouth shut for a change, something Jay appreciated but decided not to tell him. Now that he had had his own chance of bantering with him, he knew he might have to re-evaluate his opinion of him; his first distinct impression of Schuldig had been severe dislike toward him. Now it was beginning to mingle with a strange feeling of knowing him on some level or other. 

 

Jay thought back to the time he had spent as a tagalong of various street gangs before he came to London. Though one of the youngest, he had also been one of the toughest, and more often than not his ability to take and administer a good beating had earned him the right to share the moist, dark sleeping quarters one tended to seek out with no regular income at hand. There had been instances during that time when, new in a town, he had met people like Schuldig, who looked at him and knew him for what he was in a way he could only describe as instinctive. Those instances had been far and between, something for which he was actually glad, but feeling the same again now gave him the hope to be able to at least try to estimate the other man. It did not mean he liked him. 

 

“You’re not even asking where we are going,” Schuldig said contemplatively as Jay started nibbling on the last sandwich. He had meanwhile stretched his legs out to Jay’s left, his ankles crossed, his amusement apparent when Jay saw the knife sheath tucked under his pant leg. 

 

“Is it important?”

 

“Is anything important to you?”

 

Jay sensed a pattern there. Instead of giving an answer, Schuldig would ask a question, making his conversation partner edgy and hasty. He stared at him, chewing slowly, and let time pass on purpose before he answered.

 

“The destruction of the Liar is important to me.” 

 

Special emphasis on the ‘r’ in ‘liar’ had the desired result: Schuldig suddenly seemed much less interested in a conversation with him. Whatever, whoever they were, Jay knew that underneath it all, there were a few basic reactions typical to every human being. 

 

**+++++**

**United States of America**

**Los Angeles**

**March 10** **th** **, 1993**

**+++++**

 

“Far? Where the fuck are you?”

 

It was easy to follow Schuldig’s progress through the maze of dead machinery and rusty water lines. For someone who could move as fast as lightning when needed, the telepath made an awful lot of noise as he trudged through the remains of the factory, either accidentally hitting or intentionally kicking things as he went along. Farfarello lazily turned his head and spotted his team mate almost immediately; only someone who was colour-blind and deaf could not have noticed Schuldig. He wore a tailored, dark green coat, light grey slacks, white boots, and a yellow bandana. It made for a startling, stomach-turning contrast with the orange hue of his hair.

 

“Is it just me, or did your fashion sense suffer horribly from that explosion?” Farfarello asked the ceiling, smiling lightly as he heard Schuldig’s footsteps come to an abrupt halt. “If I were out to kill you, I’d just have to follow the corpses of fashion magazines to track you down.”

 

“Very funny, Far.” A pause. “How the hell did you get up _there_?”

 

“I climbed.”

 

Schuldig’s response consisted of a snort. Farfarello sighed, feeling slightly annoyed at the interruption, and rolled onto his right side, letting his body slip off the support beam directly beneath the roof like a drop of honey off a spoon. Just two weeks ago, a carefully planted explosive device had rendered the erstwhile gem of Bernhard Electronics a smoking pile of rubble. There had been nothing left to salvage, let alone rebuild from scratch. Everything here looked as though it had been put into a great press, then left to stew in the fires of hell. Farfarello thought the place looked rather appealing.

 

The thirty-foot plunge from almost the roof to the uneven ground ended with him crouched in front of Schuldig, a large dent in the metal plating of the first floor beneath him. The whole construction seemed to shake as his weight hit the ground. Schuldig, unimpressed by the display, reached out for a piece of slowly rotting machinery to keep his balance. The telepath waited until Farfarello straightened up before he hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

 

“Crawford is mightily pissed that you went off on your own.”

 

“Crawford can kiss my ass,” Farfarello said, stifling a yawn. “I said I’d be back before morning, and well before that precious meeting of his.”

 

“You should know him a little better than this by now. He was practically tearing his hair out by the time four o’clock rolled around.”

 

This meant Crawford had looked at the clock, raised an eyebrow, and told Schuldig in that calm, collected voice of his to go catch or catch up with their resident lunatic. Six months of living under the same roof with Schuldig had taught him to decipher his sometimes rather exaggerated descriptions of events. 

 

Six months, and Farfarello thought he knew them inside out. On a physical level, he did. He could pick out Schuldig’s, Crawford’s and Nagi’s rhythm in a crowd and tell the pattern of their breathing apart from someone else’s. He knew more about their morning ablutions than he had ever wanted to know. Knew who had left a half-eaten sandwich on the table yesterday morning, knew who used the sandalwood shampoo – Schuldig, of course, vanity impersonate – and that Crawford’s aftershave smelled of the sea. Nagi smelled of static electricity and suppressed rage to him, strangely enough.

 

Six months, and he knew he learned more than they taught him. Probably more than they wanted him to learn; but Farfarello was good at keeping his intentions hidden and better yet at lulling the other three in safety, elusive as it was. 

 

Schuldig looked at him, an impatient expression making him raise his eyebrows. Farfarello knew the others thought his moments of complete silence were moments when he lapsed into some kind of stupor brought on by his religious mania. He timed them carefully – the last thing he needed was Crawford telling him to take a hike, or better yet, shoot him. He had to be aware enough to be of use to them, and distant enough to be overlooked. So far, he had managed to strike that balance just nicely.

 

And every once in a while, he would throw them off. Like tonight.

 

“If you keep this up, Crawford might just get that straight jacket out of the closet again,” Schuldig muttered under his breath, grabbing a hold of Farfarello’s arm and turning to drag him toward the exit. “And for once, I agree with him. You shouldn’t be running off like that all the time. You never know what might happen while you’re gone.”

 

“Look who’s talking.”

 

The other gave him a sharp look but did not comment; there was no need for words. It was a wonder Schuldig had not caught any venereal disease yet, considering the rising number of changing bed partners he had had over the course of the last months. They had been the subject of many a loud discussion between him and Crawford – the undisputed leader of Schwarz did not care whom Schuldig bedded, as long as he did it on his time off. Schuldig, being what he was, bedded whom he wanted, when he wanted, and shared Farfarello’s opinion of Crawford’s orders: to hell with them. They were young. They wanted to have fun.

 

“You drive,” Schuldig announced as they stepped out of the factory, throwing Farfarello a set of keys. “You need to practise, anyway.”

 

\---

 

Driving a car was not the only thing he had been practising. Although his position within Schwarz placed him somewhere near the end of their food chain, Crawford was adamant about having him learn several things he might or might not need. 

 

Farfarello was bilingual by birth and seemed to have a knack for languages; Japanese, French, Spanish and German, different as though they might be, were easy for him to pick up. He was far from being fluent, but the basics were there, and he knew that with enough practise, he would be able to speak them without fault. He found politics boring; computers were machines that kept his interest but briefly, and the history of Eszet, once he understood the workings behind the group, was so blatantly mundane he wondered why no one had yet exterminated them at all. 

 

He wondered about a great many things during his first months with Schwarz. Eszet, the people his mother had warned him about so adamantly, lost the apocalyptic flair they had acquired for him over the years he ran away from them. Crawford told him Eszet was known for searching schools, wards, and yes, even asylums, for people who displayed aberrant behaviour. Often, a Gift hid beneath illusionary thinking or abnormal behaviour; Farfarello only needed to look at Schuldig when a headache caught up with the telepath to understand how a talent could drive one to the brink of insanity. 

 

It was easy to understand why he had been ‘hunted’. It had had nothing to do with him, but everything with his Gift. Eszet had never been interested in _him_. They were interested in _all_ of them – all those Telekinetics, Telepaths, Precognitives, Postcognitives, Pyrokinetics, Singers and Movers. Eszet throve for power, seeking power in the less known talents that lay hidden in the depths of the human race. Sister Ruth’s words had left him, at the tender age where his life took the wrong turn, with the impression Eszet would collect him like so much trash off the street, stuff him into a cell, and eventually kill him.

 

The opposite was the truth. Farfarello only had to look at Crawford and Schuldig to know they were cherished tools. Very well paid cherished tools; Schwarz enjoyed the most luxurious hotels and had access to information and weapons the everyday criminal could only dream of. They had a private plane at their disposal, as well as a never-ending supply of money, cars – everything. It was so easy to forget that beneath it all, they were owned. 

 

If teaching him was supposed to make him oversee that slight nook in his existing, Farfarello had to congratulate Crawford: it worked. To a certain degree. He was given lessons in knife fighting and martial arts combat. Life on the streets had prepared him, it seemed, for the course his career was now taking, but it had not shown him everything. 

 

In the first two months, Schuldig again and again enjoyed beating him in hand to hand combat, surprising Farfarello with moves that were so quick he sometimes doubted his own sanity. It took Crawford’s explaining Schuldig’s talents for him to understand. As a telepath, Schuldig could access his opponent’s mind and ‘read’ the moves they were going to make, thus enabling him to pre-empt them; telepathy, Farfarello soon found out, did not work on him, but the German effortlessly made up for that with astonishing speed. Out of frustration at not getting the upper hand even once, Farfarello settled for making Schuldig’s legs give out twice beneath the telepath, delighting in seeing his shell-shocked expression as he simply went down under a single blow. 

 

But in the end, it felt like cheating, and Farfarello vowed to himself to find a way to defeat him without using his Gift. It was easy. He had to be better than him. If speed was Schuldig’s forte, Farfarello began to use his body to simply absorb incoming punches and strikes. His body did not register physical pain. He had gotten over the terror at seeing his own blood gush from wounds years ago. He could take the most brutal kick to the groin without collapsing. And once he had a hold of someone’s leg or arm, it became a simple matter of subduing them with a brutality of his own.

 

Once he had a hold on someone, they were doomed.

 

It worked nicely on Crawford and Schuldig, and it worked wonders on normal people. Farfarello was far from being what they wanted him to be, but he knew he was getting there. Had killing up to now meant almost solely surviving, it became a sport. The illicit thrill of the hunt soon replaced the burning need to get away or do away with someone to save himself from a threat.

 

As a child, he had been playing detectives with the other children of Enniskillen. The game was still the same. Only the rules had changed.

 

In that, he met an all too willing partner in Schuldig. He had not yet found out what drove the German to sadism, but it was easy to not ask questions when the thundering drum of his victims’ heartbeats shut out all other sounds and made him feel like someone with a purpose in life. If Schuldig found something in the dying screams of a man or a woman, who was Farfarello to ask what he was searching for? Schuldig did not mind blood, he did not mind carnage, and Farfarello lived by the rule that if someone did not want to look, they could always walk away. Nagi and Crawford followed that rule to a dot. 

 

Farfarello yet lacked full knowledge of what all he was capable of, but he was aware of it, and this gave him hope he would be able to understand it in time. Schwarz did not seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere – in fact, they had been in America for half a year now, diligently working their way into the trust of a right-wing politician. Crawford had failed to mention to him why they were doing what they were doing, but he found he was not that greatly interested.

 

He waited a month before he took off on his own for the first time. It was Crawford who came for him and drove him back to their hotel suite. It was a game: Farfarello would express interest in a place, a building, or a shop, and in the evening or the early hours of the morning, he would be gone from their hotel. It drove Crawford to despair that no lock seemed to hold the Irishman in; then again, Crawford seemed to have no idea that the higher up one lived, the shorter the way to the roof was. Once on the roof of a building, one will always find an emergency escape. If not, there is always the possibility of jumping. Farfarello misjudged the height only once and walked two days on a broken ankle, exhausting himself to the limits of his healing abilities. 

 

Crawford came for him the second time. Crawford came for him the third time.

 

The fourth time, when Farfarello disappeared from the 15th floor of a congressional building, Crawford sent Schuldig and threatened Farfarello to keep him in a straight jacket from now on. Promptly, Farfarello vanished again the next evening. He was put into the straight jacket and needed four hours to free himself. 

 

He knew Crawford did not quite give up the game when the American offered a truce of sorts: Farfarello was free to go wherever he wanted as long as someone knew where he was. As long as he came back in time. As long as he did not get himself killed or put the team into danger. 

 

He could live with that, for now. He was as invisible to Crawford’s precognitive powers as he was to Schuldig’s telepathy and Nagi’s telekinesis. 

 

In a way, he was free. 

 

\---

 

“Anaheim, Disneyland, Hollywood…Americans scare me.”

 

Farfarello shifted his attention from the road to Schuldig as they passed blocks of buildings on their way from Long Beach to Downtown Los Angeles. Though he largely agreed with the sentiment, he had to concentrate on the road; Los Angeles was a maze to him, much worse than London, Dublin or any other city he had ever been to. Streets so straight they seemed cut with a razor, one looking like the other if one did not have a building or a shop front as orientation point, were a great way to lose direction. 

 

“Did you see the flags with the Disney characters on them when we passed through Anaheim?” Schuldig asked, grabbing his throat in a show of revulsion. “I don’t know about you, but if I had to live on a street lined with flags showing Mickey Mouse, I’d turn into a psychopath, too.” 

 

“How many psychopaths do you know to make that kind of judgment?” Farfarello asked, frowning as the third street light in a row made him stop the car. 

 

“More than enough. One is sitting next to me right now.” Schuldig said ominously, relaxing back into the seat. “But we won’t be here long anymore.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Oh, Crawford didn’t tell you yet? We’re getting out of here. Relocation.”

 

“Where to?”

 

“Japan. Tokyo, to be exact. We’re tying up lose ends and leave as soon as possible after that. Next week already, maybe.”

 

He nodded. ‘Tying up lose ends’ meant he would get to kill again. The knowledge filled him with a softly thrumming sensation of anticipation. 

 

**+++++**

**United States of America**

**Washington DC**

**March 17** **th** **, 1993**

**+++++**

 

Tick tock. Tick tock.

 

The Hart Senate Office Building, located northeast of the Capitol on a site bounded by Constitution Avenue, C Street, First Street, and Second Street N.E., was an ugly slab of metal, glass and concrete, fenced in by a thin row of trees. As the heart of the Senate, it was nearly as well guarded as the White House itself, but when in tow of a Senator it was exceedingly easy to find a way in.

 

When not in tow of a senator, one just had to have floor plans and enough equipment to fool security cameras.

 

Farfarello lounged comfortable on a swinging structure a good 50 feet above the white marble ground of the Hart Senate Office Building’s atrium; Crawford had given him detailed descriptions of the monstrous sculpture dominating most of the atrium’s space, and the Irishman found himself greatly impressed by the artist’s skill at giving him such a magnificent place to hide. The sculpture, given the name “Mountains and Clouds”, consisted of one stabile and one suspended construction of black steel. Combined, both parts reached the impressive height of 51 feet. Farfarello had, after gaining access through a security hatch on the roof, chosen the floating part as his hiding spot. 

 

All around him, dark offices stared at him with their glass eyes. He knew Schuldig was somewhere inside the building as well, but he had not had contact with him for over an hour now. The telepath was his backup, should something backfire.

 

All offices were dark, safe one. Senator Ruben Bernhard, a delegate from North Carolina, worked late tonight; his office was located on the eighth floor and thus nearly on eyelevel with Farfarello. Bernhard was old, hair thinning, body slowly succumbing to the seduction of fat and aches. Farfarello had been watching him for nearly half an hour now, patiently waiting for him to finish whatever he was doing. When the Senator came down, he would die.

 

Echoing footsteps from below momentarily diverted the Irishman’s attention from Senator Bernhard. The lone, small figure of a security guard passing directly beneath him held Farfarello’s attention for a minute, and he would have looked back to Bernhard, had not a second person crossed the atrium in the wake of the first. It was a woman, that much he could see. 

 

A secretary? Unlikely at this time. It was well past midnight, and Senator Bernhard only worked late because he frantically tried to cover up the tracks of the illegal funding money Eszet had channelled to him through Schwarz. 

 

The woman turned left whereas the guard turned right, slowly ascending the stairs onto the second floor. Whenever she passed a light, Farfarello tried to see her face, but a long curtain of blond, wavy hair obstructed his view. He had the sudden, stomach-turning feeling that he knew her from somewhere, but his mind drew a blank. Chances that he had seen her earlier today were slim; Farfarello had spent most of the day cooped up in their hotel suite at the Hilton, trying to work his way through Nagi’s latest Japanese lesson.

 

Farfarello shifted slightly on the structure, careful not to make it swing and draw attention to it. If this woman walked all the way up to Senator Bernhard, or if he had actually called her for help with his paper work, the entire job would take longer than they had estimated. He looked up and saw the Senator bent low over his desk, his thinning hair in disarray. 

 

The easiest way to kill him would be to give him a heart attack, Farfarello knew. He would not have to touch the man or even come into contact with him; he could do it from here, while he was lounging on top of the sculpture. But that would give him away, too. Crawford always checked how their assignments were killed, to look for errors that could be corrected next time. The very thought had made him grin more than once. Dead was dead. Who cared how they died?

 

The woman reached the fourth floor, her passage through deserted hallways clearly visible through the glass fronts of the atrium. She stopped at a door and fumbled with her purse, probably looking for keys. He patiently waited for her to find them and disappear, so he could continue with his own business here. 

 

Farfarello’s fingernails scratched lightly over the glossy surface of the mobile when the woman dropped the keys and bent to pick them up. He felt his muscles tense to a point where he could feel the steel ropes holding the floating sculpture start to tremble as the tremors from his muscles echoed through them. 

 

Older now, but still cold, seemingly distant and beautiful, the distance making it hard to see if the skin around her eyes had acquired any crow’s feet, Miss Gooding looked remarkably the same as he had seen her last, over ten years ago. Only her clothing was different; gone was the woollen dress, replaced with a crisp, black ensemble of jacket and matching skirt, a dark gem glittering at her throat. Transfixed, Farfarello watched the lights set shiny stars in her golden hair as she straightened up with the set of keys in her hands. 

 

It was her, it had to be her. He sometimes dreamed of her, them, Enniskillen. The past may fade, but it never died. 

 

The door closed behind her, and Farfarello let out a breath he did not realize holding in. What was she doing here? Memory came in a rush; him, pressed against the stairs, Ruth and Miss Gooding arguing, the nun shouting, the teacher looking on with mild interest. The Irishman stared at the closed door, fighting an intense want to get out of the building and put some distance between him and the woman who haunted his dreams together with the faces of his dead foster parents and stepsister. 

 

But then, he had a job to do, and the past was past, and he was not a scared boy running away from strangers anymore. He relaxed, boneless, lying flat against the mobile. Glanced up at the office of Ruben Bernhard and decided to do this the easy way. Ruben Bernhard would simply have to commit suicide.

 

\---

 

“It was a nice twist, I have to admit.”

 

He glanced up from where he had been staring at the creamy carpeted floor, fixing an ochre gaze on the mindlessly chatting telepath sitting across the two seats on the other side of the plane. He made the useless observation that when Schuldig sat on something, he owned it. A careless sprawl, one leg thrown over the armrest, a bottle of water clutched in the crook of his arm; Schuldig looked like depraved innocence with a devil’s smile and loved to put emphasis on that fact, even if it meant blatantly thrusting his crotch out for the entire world to stare at his missing pants button. Farfarello blankly stared at the stretch of skin between shirt and pants before he leaned forward and gently butted his head against the back of the seat in front of him.

 

He had been edgy and in a foul mood since killing Ruben Bernhard. Crawford and Nagi were thankfully sensitive enough to accept his state of being as a lunatic’s mood swing and left him alone; Schuldig, on the other hand, and out of reasons Farfarello could not fathom, seemed to take the Irishman’s obvious disinterest in conversation as reason to hold one for two.

 

“I would have _loved_ to be there. Boy, it was in every fucking newspaper this morning! Crawford, aren’t you proud of laughing boy here?”

 

The tiny rustle of newspaper from the back of the plane apparently served as a response, for Schuldig rolled his eyes, dangled his foot, and leaned forward to fix Farfarello with an impish grin.

 

“He’s jealous, you know? Even he couldn’t have pulled it off better. Bernhard must’ve been nothing but a blob of meat by the time he hit the pavement.”

 

Farfarello was not proud of what he had done. It had been cheap work, brought on by the rattle Miss Gooding’s appearance in the Senate building had given him. He was by now skilled enough to use his Gift that way; still, there had been something disappointing in watching the Senator walk to the window as though on strings, open it, and climb outside into the cold night air. 

 

“Just one thing I don’t get,” Schuldig continued, still dangling his foot, “How the hell did you get to the roof that fast? You nearly scared the crap out of me when you appeared up there barely a minute after Bernhard took the dive.”

 

“Magic,” Farfarello muttered into the upholstery of the seat in front of him. “I’m the magical moving man. When you switch off the light, I’ll glow in the dark.”

 

Schuldig finally seemed to get the hint to keep his mouth shut and blew breath at the hair hanging into his eyes, turning his head to stare out of the window in a display of annoyed depraved innocence. 

 

**+++++**

**Japan**

**Tokyo**

**August 21** **st** **, 1993**

**+++++**

 

Schuldig lost his innocence, if he ever possessed some, sometime before they started working for Takatori Reiji and after they left America. And after that, with the exception of Crawford maybe, Schuldig became the most stable element in the Irishman’s existence. To Farfarello, the change came gradual – he was occupied with himself during the first months in their new home, possessed by the idea of being the perfect killer. He brought his body to its limits, working out so hard Crawford twice threatened him with the straight jacket should the Irishman overtax himself and thus endanger them by not being part of their jobs anymore. 

 

His body, he thought of it as a tool sometimes, grew so quickly Crawford looked at him one morning, blinked, and seemed not to understand why Farfarello suddenly was nearly as tall as him. Then he took him out and bought him new clothes. 

 

He was growing, both in height and breadth. Life on the streets – and that was a term beginning to bore Farfarello, because what he was doing now was so much more dangerous and thrilling and entertaining – had made him wiry and lanky; now muscles began to fill out his arms and legs, expanding his chest, knotting the skin over his belly into hard coils of strength. His face lost most of its baby fat, and though it would never quite lose that strangely soft look, his cheekbones and the line of his jaw became more prominent. 

 

Farfarello looked into mirrors and liked what he saw; he dressed in black leather and he knew what his victims saw. Fear smelled of acrid sweat and sounded like a bird beating its wings against its cage; in a population of mostly dark-haired and small Japanese, he stood out like a beacon. Had his white hair and yellow eye meant hiding in a crowd of Europeans or Americans was impossible, his height and built now added to the problem. It was no wonder Crawford asked him to at least chose the night should he need to go on one of his ‘trips’ again.

 

Farfarello agreed. Tokyo was unlike anything he had ever seen before. 

 

Nagi and Crawford’s Japanese lessons had prepared him enough to not starve on Tokyo’s amazing streets, yet as soon as a conversation became lively and heated he lost the thread and had to rely on tone of voice more than actual understanding of what was said. It annoyed him; street vendors and shop clerks were a challenge he was not fit to master yet. Had he thought the language easy before he now began to understand that it would take him months, if not years, to be able to speak Japanese perfectly. Although they had a TV in their new hideout, Farfarello refused to learn from soap operas and cartoons.

 

Then there was the city itself – but maybe it was wrong to call Tokyo a city. She was a giant anthill, a _moloch_ , large and layered enough to keep one’s mind in thrall for a lifetime. Tokyo was loud and hectic at the centre, ancient and calm in her parks and historical temples. There was so much to see it was good to close one’s eyes once in a while. The temptation to get lost was simply too great. 

 

He saw the man they were going to work for, a Japanese politician, once. Crawford instructed him to keep a low profile when in the company of Takatori Reiji, artfully explaining that Farfarello’s appearance might not be that good a thing to build a foundation of trust between Schwarz and their new protégé on. Farfarello watched him during their first meeting and agreed; Takatori Reiji was violent, opinionated and had utopian dreams of power that seemed too big for his greedy, grey world of corruption and ruthlessness. In a way, he reminded him of Eszet. They shared all his virtues. Yet Takatori was only human, a _non_ -Gifted. The temptation to kill him once he dared insult Farfarello would be too great. 

 

So the Irishman stayed in their new locale, training, learning, and waiting. It was during this time, the first few months in Japan, that he became aware of the gradual changes in Schuldig, and the gradual changes between all of them. Considering their ages and the time they had been working together as a team, one might have said they were getting to know each other. Facades were dropped, hidden truths revealed, bad habits came to light. Farfarello had it easy. They assumed they had read all about his bad habits in the psychological examination reports from Gallagher, and he made painfully sure they never caught a glimpse of his ‘true’ face. 

 

He could lean back and watch while Schuldig and Crawford’s egos clashed. He could ponder Nagi’s heritage during the times the youngest of them rebelled against Crawford’s stiff rules in his own subtle ways. He could lazily guess at what it would take to break through the immaculate, seemingly unbreakable wall Crawford surrounded himself with.

 

\---

 

The early bird gets the worm. The early worm gets eaten.

 

\---

 

During the last weeks of summer, Crawford sent him and Schuldig out on odd jobs that mostly included killing people who had no apparent relation with their protégé Takatori. They lead them deeply into the guts of the great city, acquainting them intimately with the intricate curls of the Yakuza and the gangs working for the legendary crime lords of Japan. Farfarello was fascinated by them, those tattooed men with their hard eyes and merciless minds. He liked their almost subterranean worlds, existing beneath Tokyo’s glitter and attractions, and how they resided in their little realms like kings looking out over a gaudy court of deadly jesters. 

 

It was not long before he ventured out alone and sought them out. Careful to stay undetected, Farfarello often wondered what it would be like, to be one of them. To have that power, that little piece of fame. To smell and hear the fright in someone’s voice when his name was spoken. Even when his own life had lead him to the side of gangs in Ireland and England, Farfarello kept himself apart from the others, carving his own niche into their midst. He had trusted people once and they betrayed him. 

 

But would he be able to make people trust _him_? The concept was alien and fascinating at the same time; it was too easy to gain obedience through putting fear into someone; what would it be like to make someone obey by making them trust you?

 

And did Eszet, to a certain degree, not operate on the same assumption?

 

Perhaps it was time to find out. He had three guinea pigs he could experiment on. 

 

**+++++**

**Japan**

**Tokyo**

**1997**

**+++++**

 

Some when between letting Takatori die because the man was a lost case, and trying to rid themselves of Eszet because they were a lost case, too, Sister Ruth suddenly appeared in Tokyo and shook Farfarello’s life like it had not been shaken in years. 

 

How had she found him? Had it been fate? Luck? What had driven her to come to Japan, of all places, and look for her son there? Farfarello never understood it, and he gave up trying to come up with answers soon. She was here. It was enough. 

 

He tried to call her anything but ‘Sister Ruth’, and yes, sometimes the word ‘mother’ did find its place in a thought flitting through his mind. But when he saw her again, nearly fourteen years after leaving behind Enniskillen and everything he had once been, he could not bring himself to even think of her as the woman who had given life to him. Sister Ruth had changed. She prattled about God and sins and how everything would be forgiven if only he clasped his hands in prayer and repented what he had done. Farfarello looked at what he had done, and saw no fault there. He was what he had set off to become. Pity she did not understand it.

 

The line between charade and real terror became thin and worn when he killed her. Granted, two members of a rival assassin group calling themselves Weiß did nothing to ease the brunt of the strain the entire scenario put on him, and maybe the abandoned Christian church on the outskirts of Tokyo was just a tad too fitting to serve as theatre stage for what he did to Ruth, but Farfarello experienced pure guilt as he stabbed his mother. It lasted for a second, maybe, bringing to his mind that he had done the unspeakable…for the second time. He was probably the only person on the entire planet who got to kill the woman who claimed to be his mother twice. All her life ever since he had been born, Ruth had tried to protect him. He thanked her, ultimately, by killing her, thus erasing the very last person from his past who knew who he had been and where he came from. 

 

Schuldig and Crawford knew what happened that day, but they did not ask after they ‘rescued’ him from the church. Farfarello was glad the telepath did not needle him about the circumstances that had lead to Ruth’s appearance in Tokyo; he and Schuldig were friends now, sort of, or at least the Irishman liked to think they were. Nevertheless, Farfarello had not let up on his charade. It had become second nature to him to pretend he was insane, so much so that at times he thought he _had_ gone insane. He knew that if he revealed his true nature to them now, after nearly five years of make-believe, he would not only lose their trust but also his place in Schwarz. They were a tightly knit circle of four, and no one from the outside had insight into their lives. He did not doubt they would even try to kill him once he let on that he had been deceiving them for years now.

 

So he carried on. Ruth’s death haunted him for a month before he made the forced attempt at forgetting, surprised it worked. He found out he did not care all that much, and that he had simply been shaken by her appearance because seeing Ruth again was the last thing he had expected to happen.

 

Another thing he did not expect would happen was his reaction to seeing the Elders of Eszet the first time. He knew Crawford was in constant contact with them via email and the telephone if the matter could be handled over the telephone, but Farfarello as a person had never come into contact with them. They were a shadow looming on the edge of their daily work; once Schwarz decided it was time to take their own course through time, the Elders became a hindrance they had to get rid of. 

 

During that time, after Takatori Reiji’s violent death, Farfarello met another like himself for the first time in his life. Though she did not speak, and much less moved, he recognized Aya Fujimiya when they kidnapped her. She was in a coma, but the Irishman had only to touch her to know what she was; when he touched her, he felt an answering power surge up within her and tried to meet with his. He made sure he touched her once, and never again. It scared him to see someone he knew had the same Gift he had lying without motion, caught in a stasis of her own power. Whatever had happened to the girl, her Gift had tried to protect her, successfully freezing her in a state where she neither aged nor woke from her coma. 

 

To say he was terrified once he learned what the Elders planned to do with her was an understatement. Farfarello did not believe much in magic or star constellations, nor did he believe in the mumbo-jumbo with which the Elders went about that age-old rite, but seeing the phantom shapes of something older and meaner than anything he had ever seen before try to take over the body of the double Schwarz had acquired to fool the Elders scared him half out of his wits. All the more so since he, although safely out of reach, felt an answering surge within him to merge with it. 

 

He understood, then, to a fuller extend, why Eszet had been collecting Gifted from all over the world. To find minions carrying out their orders, and to find, ultimately, a vessel for the demon they tried to resurrect. It made sense, now, that his father had died. Though the words Ruth had spoken had lost some of their terror, had become dim and scarcely remembered, Farfarello doubted his father had been killed. He believed his father had refused to let himself be captured and ultimately chosen death over a life that meant enslavement to an organization intend on ruling the world through half-forgotten spells and ancient rites. 

 

Whatever had happened, he knew he would never know the entire truth unless he asked, and asking one of the Elders why his father had been killed was the last thing on Farfarello’s mind. It was enough for him to witness what Eszet was capable of to know they must never learn his true powers. 

 

Farfarello was glad when the last of the Elders died under his blade, and he was glad when the Lazarus Temple fell into the ocean. Danger was held at bay.

 

They were free to go wherever they wanted. 

 

**+++++**

**Japan**

**Tokyo**

**1998**

**+++++**

 

He was the last to leave the Schwarz apartment. Last, because the others had left before him and without telling him, or even asking him if he wanted to tag along. 

 

In the end, he was not surprised. Disappointed, yes, but it was no surprise. It ripped the tranquil blanket of safety, of knowing there was some place he belonged, away from him. It left him with a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach as he wandered through empty rooms and opened empty drawers. 

 

Like a scientist discovering the ultimate breakthrough formula, Farfarello had basked in the knowledge of being able to pass as human, for what it was worth. For years, he had detected no fault in his calculations, no error in his doings. He did what they wanted him to, they kept him. Perhaps he was feeling a little too much like a martyr, at times, recuperating from gunshot wounds, stab wounds, broken bones and internal damage. Perhaps he had thought they would keep him, stay close to him, because it meant something to them that he would take bullets meant for Schuldig and Nagi. 

 

Perhaps he had done the same they would have done if he had not been faster. And yes, perhaps he had even forgotten with time that they were killers, and that killers did not form attachments. Not those kinds of attachments, anyway. And then, there was the knowledge that, in their stead, he might just have done the same thing to them. He looked at mirrors and knew what he was. 

 

His experiment was a failure. He had worked on his façade a little too well.

 

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

 

END


End file.
